00:00I'm at Bay Tales, an established annual festival dedicated to crime and mystery writing held
00:05at the Playhouse Whitley Bay, a theatre and cultural venue on the North Tyneside coast.
00:10Today's programme includes discussions between leading crime authors, sessions exploring
00:15current trends in the genre and opportunities for festival goers to buy and have books signed
00:21by writers.
00:22We have Anne Cleaves our patron here every year and we do have some familiar faces who've
00:27been here before, whether they're debut authors or really established writers, we know that
00:32they're going to get on stage, they're going to talk about their process, what inspired
00:36them, their favourite books, because we're all readers.
00:39We try to be as informal as possible so I know that the authors, they might be mega sellers
00:44with TV adaptations, they're still going to take the time to greet people and have a chat
00:50and just be magnificent.
00:51It's hard if you're a writer and you're not in London, but we're bringing agents up
00:57and we're bringing publishers up and so that makes it a great experience for everybody really.
01:05I think because we're involving publishers right at the start, so they're sponsoring the
01:10panels and they're choosing which authors they'd like to invite.
01:14What publishers want to do their business, they want to sell lots of books.
01:17And here we do sell lots of books.
01:21I want to show that Whitley Bay and the North East are incredible, full of incredible people
01:27who love reading and even if there are people who don't have literacy at all or have a lower
01:35level of literacy, I want it to be accessible to people and that's why we have, today we have
01:42a couple of charities supporting us.
01:43There are not a lot of opportunities for adults to learn to read if they have missed out at
01:50school and they could have missed out for hundreds of reasons, illness or dyslexia or issues at
01:57home that prevented them from studying at school.
02:00When people hear about the event, then they become more interested in reading and it promotes
02:05people like foreign books, it promotes us, so it has a crossover to many different areas.
02:14Bay Tales is completely putting the North East on the map in terms of literature because
02:19not only have you got great authors around here, you're also bringing brilliant authors
02:24to the area and loads want to come here because they also sell loads of books because loads
02:28of our love buying books around here.
02:30We really do, getting the chance to have them signed and dedicated and get samples of books
02:37that are coming out later on in the year, it's like you're part of an exclusive group even
02:43though actually it's really accessible but you feel like you're part of something special.
02:46It's such a fantastic day and it's wonderful to see all these amazing authors and how happy
02:51they make our audience and the audience is packed.
02:55Yeah, I'm very tired but it's totally worth it.
02:58So, thank you so much.
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