Venice Noir… what a launch

Well, we did it. What a weekend. Some amazing venues, some amazing authors, and Venice too.

Thanks so much to everyone who came…. Italian and English speaking. It was a pleasure to put al this together alongside my fellow organisers, Philip Gwynne Jones, Gregory Dowling and Giacomo Brunoro, with the extraordinary generosity and support of the festival’s principal backers, Marco Vidal and Silvia Bandolin of the perfume house Merchant of Venice and book store Studium.

We had a wonderful range of authors on the English side, Barbara Nadel, Essie Fox, Erin Kelly, Anna Mazzola and David Bishop and some entertaining professional advice on how to kill people from pathologist Suzy Lishman. And of course our guest of honour Ian Rankin who deservedly won the first Venice Noir award for his contribution to the genre.

But it’s what our audience think that matters most and here, from Theresa Temple on Instagram, is a comment that I think sums up exactly what we were trying to achieve…

Magnificent settings, incredible authors, and so relaxed. All the authors were so accessible, it was like friends chatting, drinking (well it is Venice!) and generally having a great time. 

We’ll never be a festival where authors talk down to you from a stage. Next year Venice Noir will run for three days from November 13, and thanks to the generosity of the beautiful Ateneo Veneto we will be back in the same historic location. Just bigger, better and bolder with some tweaks and innovations to this year’s debut format.

See you there…