Grammy and Brit Award-winning global superstar Dua Lipa has reflected on her successful curation of the London Literature Festival 2026 at the Southbank Centre, calling the two-week event a "dream come true" as the 19th iteration concluded on Sunday, 1st November.
Working alongside her Service95 Book Club, the artist brought a series of sold-out events to her hometown as part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary celebrations. "Curating the London Literature Festival was a dream come true," said Dua Lipa. "Not only did I get to sit down with some of my all-time literary heroes, I got to share the experience with a full-house audience here in my hometown of London. This is why we created the Service95 Book Club - to bring together readers with authors for collective moments of joy, reflection and gratitude. I’m so grateful to the Southbank Centre team for being the perfect partners. To borrow from Patti Smith, these moments are my bread of angels.”
The programme featured high-profile headline interviews at the Royal Festival Hall, where Lipa sat down before 2,700-strong audiences with Zadie Smith, poet and musician Mustafa, and iconic artist Patti Smith. Additional events curated by Lipa included sessions with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad, a Translated Fiction Showcase, Kae Tempest’s Fierce Sounds, an exploration of Re-Writing Male Tenderness, drop-in sessions with Authors of the Estate, and an urgent panel on censorship alongside English PEN.
Ted Hodgkinson, Head of Literature & Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, praised the collaboration, stating: “What a year for London Literature Festival, which has seen Southbank Centre come alive with some truly momentous and joyous events over the last 13 days, making it one of the absolute highlights of our 75th anniversary year. Dua has brought a fresh curatorial eye and a wonderfully wide-ranging sensibility to the programming, and it has been thrilling to see her vision translate to our stages and bring so many people of all ages together around a shared love of literature. I can’t thank Dua and the wonderful Service95 Book Club team enough for this one-of-a-kind collaboration.”
