11/09/2026
While we are busy programming we thought it might be nice to introduce you to a few of the people behind the scenes - the book lovers who help bring the festival together!
In the first of our series of team introductions, we say hello to Jane Fitzgerald, who is the festival’s Creative Director...
Jane joined the Words by the Water team in 2014 after five years of editing Devon Life magazine and has been involved in most of the WTBW festivals since. Initially working with Kay Dunbar, the founder of Ways with Words, who she describes as 'an inspirational mentor and delightful risk taker', Jane learned the nuts and bolts of programming a festival. She has programmed events in the Studio at the Theatre by the Lake since 2016, and now in tandem with Lucy, she is programming the Main House too.
“When I was working for Ways With Words we were running annual festivals in Dartington, Southwold and Keswick. Words by the Water was (and still is) my favourite, largely down to the people I work with here in Cumbria - the theatre and bookshop staff, the diligent chair people and the valiant volunteers. They are all amazing. I love the feeling that the Theatre by the Lake is part and parcel of life – a stopping place for ideas, for walks, for books, for meetings with friends and unexpected encounters.”
It’s a family affair. Jane’s daughter Florence, an independent producer, works for the festival and is to be seen with her clipboard making sure writers are where they should be and have all they need; her husband Richard also volunteers, driving writers back and forth from Penrith to Keswick.
Jane lives in South Devon, paints in oils when she can and works as a flower arranger at the National Trust’s Coleton Fishacre.
Bookends Keswick
