Venue hails success of book festival event

The boss of Annie’s Burger Shack has called for Derby to host a wider range of activities following the success of its first ever Derby Book Festival event.

During the festival, which took place last month, the Friary Street venue hosted a talk by sports journalist and presenter Lee McKenzie.

The event, backed by Marketing Derby – and attended by a number of is Bondholders – attracted an audience of more than 100 people, who had come to listen to Lee being interviewed by Penguin PR’s Kerry Ganly about her new book called Inside F1.

Annie Spaziano, who operates Annie’s Burger Shack, believes the response to the event has revealed a demand in the city for discussions, presentations and live talks.

She said: “Lee and Kerry’s F1 Derby Book Festival event was excellent and it was lovely to see everyone enjoying themselves, with many saying that they’d never visited us before and admiring our beautiful building, which is a converted church.

“The number of people who attended and the success of the event, plus other author talks which took place as part of the book festival, shows me Derby is crying out for events with interesting speakers, who could talk about their careers or get involved in a live debate.

“It’s not something you see very often but it brings in audiences who maybe aren’t being catered for at the moment.

“We need to get more people into the city centre and, now we’ve hosted our first book festival event, I’d love to hold more events like it at other times of the year.”