CELEBRITY names may tend to grab the headlines at book festivals, but the real meat of the event will always be the literary writers, the Booker prize-winners and those whose books make us think, tell us things we didn’t know we needed to know, prod us into thinking more deeply or excite our imagination in unexpected ways. There is an impressive list of authors at this year’s Bath Literary Festival, which runs from 16th to 25th May.

Look out for the charismatic Ben Okri, the youngest ever recipient of the Booker prize, who writes about what it means to be human. He will be talking on Saturday 17th May at St Swithin’s |Church at 6pm. Okri’s latest novel Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken Hearted was described by The Guardian: as “whimsical tale of transformation”.

Kit de Waal’s first novel for adults in seven years is a warm story for second starts in life. The Best of Everything is about what it means to care, how we learn to live in the aftermath of loss and what happens when love steals into our lives when we least expect it. Kit, who chairs this year’s judging panel for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, will be at Waterstones on Tuesday 20th at 7pm..

Daniel Kehlmann, a Booker Prize short-listed author who has lived in Vienna, Berlin and New York, will be talking about his new book, The Director, which fictionalises the story of the famous Austrian film director GW Pabst, at noon at the Mission Theatre on Friday 23rd. His books have won numerous awards and been translated into over 20 languages.

Other leading authors at the festival include Robert Macfarlane, Lionel Shriver and the Chinese-born British novelist Xiaolu Guo, who will be at Waterstones on Sunday 18th at 6pm, talking about her new book, Call Me Ishmaelle, a reimagining from a female perspective of the battle between man and nature depicted in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

For more information visit bathfestivals.org.uk/the-bath-literature-festival