MyVLF was launched in April 2019, by the Blonde Plotters, Gwyn GB, Deborah Carr and Kelly Clayton, and immediately won several awards, including the Bookseller’s storybook Start-up of the Year. Little did we know that our concept of a virtual online book festival site, would become so relevant. It was a difficult and challenging 18 months for all of us including authors who were hit hard when all face-to-face events were cancelled and their access to readers cut off. Add to this the loneliness and isolation many of us felt during lockdown, and we at MyVLF knew that we had to do what we could to assist.

When Covid-19 hit our world, we worked flat-out holding as many events as we could and supporting hundreds of authors with their book launches, as well as helping many physical book festivals to reach new audiences. We were humbled by the many messages from our tens of thousands of members worldwide, who not only enjoyed attending these events, finding new books to read and connecting with new authors, but who also said MyVLF helped them get through the isolation that Covid brought.

Unfortunately, the huge workload in running so many events, resulted in us not being able to concentrate on our own writing careers. We live for writing and so regretfully we have decided to close MyVLF so that we can reconnect with our author careers and families.