The fifth Chipping Norton Literary Festival ran from 21 – 24 April 2016. The amazing range of events dotted all around Chipping Norton included young people's poetry competition (winners featured in this photo), creative writing workshops, big names from the world of literary fiction, children's illustrators, food and drink demonstrations, crime writers, natural history events, debut novelists and storytelling sessions for very young children. 

Jenny Aston and Mike Rushby took some amazing photographs, have a look at the Festival Gallery. 

At ChipLitFest we operate a profit share scheme that means all participating authors are entitled to an equal share of our operating profit. Recently, there has been a growing call for authors to be fairly remunerated for their work at literary festivals, after all - no authors, no festival - and we strongly believe that all our authors are entitled to fair payment for the work they do. We are a small, young literary festival and our profits are not substantial but by creating an environment where the authors feel truly valued we will benefit and enlarge our audiences and, in turn, increase the profit we have to share. Read more about the scheme here. 

The winners are announced for ChipLitFest's first Short Story Competition. Sponsored by pennyshorts.com and judged by novelist Tessa Hadley, we had over 250 entries from all around the world. Each winning story is available here and is accompanied by comments from Tessa about what made the winners stand out. First place, The Equalizer by Anna Livia Johnston; second place Refuge by Becky Sheaves; third place Walking to Dalkey by Deirdre Shanahan

Alongside our author events, we always offer creative writing workshops  - many of us consider ourselves readers and writers. Delighted to say that this year's Festival has inspired a number of blogs - take a look at visitors Joy Culver and Jessica Friend, author and chef Saira Hamilton, authors and programmers Jo Cotterill and John Dougherty, vlogger Rebeccah Giltrow and Mango Bubbles Boy, one of our junior reporters.