Best-selling author Nick Hornby is the latest high profile author to sign up to appear at the Bradford Literature Festival.

The film version of his books, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About a Boy will be showing at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television during the festival before his talk on Tuesday, May 21.

Festival organiser Tom Palmer managed to secure the appearance after persuading the author's publishers Penguin to take a look around Bradford theatres.

"Penguin has decided to take their authors on the road to theatres around the country. They were coming up to Leeds to look at venues and I persuaded them to come over here and have a look round and they really liked it."

Other big names set to appear at the festival include former Secretary of State for Ireland, Mo Mowlam, best-selling author and journalist Tony Parsons, who wrote Man and Boy, and poet Gerard Benson.

Mr Palmer hopes that the event will put Bradford well and truly on the map as a centre for literature.

"It's just really exciting to get publishers from London coming to Bradford. This will also really help the 2008 bid for Capital of Culture status, it will raise Bradford's profile and make it known as a great place for live literature," he said.

As well as big-name authors, the festival will be a platform to launch a new book by Bradford writer Younis Alam, known for his Manningham crime thriller Annie Potts is Dead, and a performance by Joolz Denby with James Nash.

Tickets for the Festival in May will go on sale nearer the time with details published in the Telegraph & Argus.