You might have noticed posters for the Cambridge Literary Festival cropping up around town – I certainly have, and every year I’m more determined to pull myself out of the end-of-term mire and seize this fantastic literary opportunity. The event, which has Winter and a Spring incarnations, began in 2003 as 'Wordfest', after author Ali Smith and Cathy Moore realised Cambridge was the perfect place for such a forum on literature. It has grown every year since, and played host to an astonishing array of this generation's great minds. This year the festival takes place on Sunday 30th November and there'll be talks and releases from many big names in the literary world and beyond, including Clare Balding, Shami Chakrabarti & Owen Jones. For those of you who won't be chained to a library chair, here's my pick of the bunch.

Ali Smith, How to be Both 2:30-3:30 pm, Union Chamber, £5.00 / £12.00

As one of the festival's founders, Smith is unsurprisingly a regular at both the winter and spring festivals and she's always very popular. Described by Kate Atkinson as "one of the few contemporary writers ploughing a genuinely modernist furrow", I was first drawn to her by her mind-blowing 2011 novel, There but for The. Keen on structures that might, in the hands of a lesser author, become literary gimmicks, she’ll be talking to Alex Clark about her latest offering, How to be Both. Shortlisted for the prestigious 2014 Booker Prize, it comes in two distinct parts, which alternate order in different copies: one half is about a girl called George in 2013, and the other about a fresco painter in Renaissance Italy.

Laura Bates, The Everyday Sexism Project, Union Chamber, 13:00 - 14:00, £5.00 / £10.00

With the explosion of mainstream feminism over the last few years, recently reflected in the successful campaign against ITV’s Dapper Laughs, and given how warped portrayals of the modern feminist can be, it's more important than ever to get back to basics; Laura Bates is doing just that. She founded the Everyday Sexism Project after being sexually harassed on London public transport in 2012, and has since been sent 60,000+ instances of sexual harassment and abuse that people of all ages, mostly women, have faced all over the world. The project fills the gap between stories (touching but anecdotal) and statistics (shocking but impersonal), and the book collates and contextualises those accounts with passion and perspicuity. 

Jack Monroe, A Girl Called Jack, 4-5pm, Union Library, £5.00 / £10.00

Those of you who've seen Britain Isn't Eating, the new Royal Court/Guardian "micro-play" doing the rounds on Facebook, might be wanting to learn more about the problem of food poverty; listening to Jack Monroe, one of the play’s collaborators, is a good place to start. She's a well-known campaigner against hunger and poverty in the UK, and her first book, A Girl Called Jack, was a bestseller, detailing how she managed a £10 per week food budget as a single mum in Essex. Her second book, A Year in 120 Recipes, has just been released. This topic is especially close to my heart after working at Kids Company, a charity which works with some of London & Bristol's most deprived kids, on their project 'Hungry Childhoods: Children's Experience of Food Insecurity': worth a google if you've got the time. Jack will be speaking with festival patron Anna Whitelock.

Andrew Marr, Head of State, 4-5pm, Union Chamber, £5.00 / £12.00

You may have loved his History of Modern Britain programme, his documentary about the Queen, or his hosting of Radio 4's Start the Week. Now you have the chance to love his fiction! Marr’s debut novel combines all his sociopolitical nous into what festival organisers call 'a darkly satirical, gripping political narrative that takes a gleefully twisted spin through the corridors of power’. Marr gets double kudos for having written it while recovering from a stroke - how do you feel about that 2,000 word essay now? 

Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Winstanley Lecture Hall (Trinity) 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm, £5.00 / £10.00

Heavily influenced by James Joyce, McBride's first novel, a literary dark horse, is still making massive waves in the world of fiction. It's hard to get into because of its unusual syntactic style, but life-changing once you're in. She’ll be talking with Tom Gatti, Culture Editor of the New Statesman.

If you're on a strict student budget, it's worth noting that the festival is looking for stewards and volunteers to help with the events. To find out more, email admin@cambridgeliteraryfestival.com