The idea of having a tent devoted specifically to the local community was born at the very first meeting of the book festival committee back in 2017. We wanted to create an inclusive space that was open to everyone, especially the kind of people who are normally excluded from literary festivals.

Since then, the Community Tent has hosted over 100 local writers and poets, many of whom were unpublished at the time, and have since gone on to be published. Local writer Yvonne Bailey-Smith's story encapsulates the spirit of the Community Tent: she first appeared in 2018 as part of the Queen's Park Voices event, and then returned to the stage in triumph in 2021 with her first published novel The Day I fell Off My Island, interviewed by legendary publisher Margaret Busby.

Kwami, a member of the local community who attended the book festival in 2023, also epitomises the Community Tent ethos; when he saw that local multimedia artist and writer Linett Kamala (a director of the Notting Hill Carnival and its first female DJ) was appearing on the Community Tent stage, he said: I had to come and find out what the Queen's Park Book Festival was all about. This is not something I would normally dream of coming to, but I've spent all day here, and it's absolutely wonderful. Especially because entry to the Community Tent is free!

Not only is the Queen's Park Book Festival unique in having a stage that is completely free of charge, but it is also the only literary festival to have a platform entirely devoted to local writers, local poets and local charities; the Community Tent houses the most inclusive and diverse stage of any literary festival in Britain.