Off The Shelf, the month-long literature festival, has gotten underway in Sheffield. The event, which is hosted and run by the University of Sheffield, is the largest literature festival in the North and goes on from the 10th of October to the 10th of November.

Now in its 34th year, Off the Shelf brings the best of the UK’s literary world to Sheffield, welcoming Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq, and Horrible Histories creator Terry Deary among its headline guests.

Pip Strafford, Marketing and Communications Manager, said that writers want to come to Sheffield due to how established the festival is.

“So the team goes to London every year and they meet up with the publishers. So it’s when people have a book out that year, promoting their book and their work.

“And then we meet with the publishers, we select and curate the festival.

“We attract international and national talent to the city, because we’re a really established festival, people love coming to the festival. We have a fantastic reputation. People love the city.”

The festival attracts over 20,000 visitors over the course of the month, and the University works with several other collaborators to hold the event, such as LTI Korea, the Japan Foundation and Speaking Volumes.

Mr Strafford said that Off The Shelf works with a lot of venues and hosts in theatres around the city.

“It’s very much collaborative, but it really is the point of the festival.

“It’s to put Sheffield on the cultural scene for literary work. The spoken word, the written work, It’s about making the city more culturally vibrant.

“That makes us more attractive as a destination venue for our audience, but also I do think that it makes the city more exciting, particularly during the autumn period.”

But the festival isn’t just about headline acts. Off The Shelf also gives local writers the chance to stage their own events, supported in previous years by Arts Council funding.

Pip Strafford said the funding has been vital in helping them deliver more community-focused events, but they weren’t able to secure it this year.

“We’re really huge advocates of supporting local talent.

“We commission them to come to the festival and put on events in previous years, when we’ve had funding from the arts council. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful this year.

“Even though we’re not able to do that this year, we’ve still involved a number of local authors, local poets, and took them to perform at the festival.

“That gives them that platform to position themselves in a way that they’ve played in such a big festival such as ours.”

As the festival continues despite funding challenges, Off The Shelf remains a main part of Sheffield’s cultural calendar.