CONTENTS of the Middlesbrough Literary Festival include best-selling author Kathy Lette, radio DJ Andy Kershaw and homegrown playwright Wally K Daly.

Running from Saturday (June 15) until Saturday, June 29, it aims to celebrate words through reading, writing and music.

Now in its fifth year, it is concentrating on creative writing and performance, offering writing workshops, local history sessions and a chance to meet literary agents, and publishers.

After years as a newspaper columnist and television sitcom writer for Columbia Pictures in America, Kathy Lette wrote 11 international best-selling books including Mad Cows. She will be speaking at Middlesbrough Central Library on Monday, June 17, at 7pm, when tickets cost £7.

The town’s Mink Bar plays host to broadcaster and travel writer, Andy Kershaw, who will tell anecdotes from his autobiography, No Off Switch, on Tuesday, June 25, at 7pm. Tickets cost £7.

Having written more than 200 plays as well as penning episodes of BBC One’s Casualty and the former children’s drama series, Byker Grove, Wally K Daly will speak about his career at a free lecture in the Centuria Building at Teesside University on Wednesday, June 19, at 6.30pm.

The writer behind comedy duo Ant and Dec’s SMTV Live who co-scripted Harry Hill’s ‘Harry Hill’s Shark Infested Custard’ is holding a free ‘screen-writing for children’ event on Saturday, June 29, at Marton Library at 10am.

For fans of historical costume presentations, the Costume Historian will present Jane Austen’s Wardrobe in honour of the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice on Thursday, June 20, at Middlesbrough Central Library, costing £6, at 2pm and 7pm.

For more information on the 2013 Literary Festival and events programme visit middlesbrough.gov.uk/litfest.