The Franschhoek Literary Festival has a huge line up of literary talent in workshops, talks and discussions from 10am on Friday 11 May until 3.30pm on Sunday 13 May. The whole of Franschhoek is involved with plenty of stalls, booksellers and eateries standing by for the literary crowd.

With authors talking about crime novels, cookbooks, cartoons, romance and poetry and even cellphone literature, no matter your favourite genre, there will be something for you. Aspiring writers can glean inspiration from the likes of successful Cape author Finuala Dowling in Walking the Talk at 4pm on Saturday and Henrietta Rose-Innes in Conversation on Friday at 10am and 4.30pm. Well-known journalist and arts’ critique, Marianne Thamm has discussions with personalities such as Pieter-Dirk Uys, Gareth Cliff and Martin Welz (Editor of Noseweek).

But at a time when readers are moving to Kindles and iPads or getting their short sharp information fix from tweets, one wonders is there a future for printed books? For an answer go to the talk entitled ‘The Technology Tsunami’ on Friday at 11.30 with Arthur Goldstuck of World Wide Worx and Simon Dingle, broadcaster on hi-tech topics, when they present a wake-up call about the techno revolution and the survival of books. And for the tweet generation, Jenny Crwys-Williams will find out how to gain a following on Saturday at 2.30pm from three master tweeters; Jonathan Jansen, Gareth Cliff and Gus Silber.

The full schedule of events is on the Franschhoek Literary Festival website.