Charity auction tea date with Young Bond author Charlie Higson

18-May-2005 • Event

The National Library for the Blind (NLB) is teaming up with top authors in an exciting charity fundraising auction which will offer book lovers the chance to bid for an opportunity to have tea with their favourite author - reports MI.

But who will you choose? Will it be Jacqueline Wilson or Terry Pratchett? Or perhaps you'd love to be able to chat to Jon Snow or Charlie Higson? Visit www.nlb-online.org/hay now for a full list of participating authors and you could be in with a chance of having tea with one of them!

Those who succeed in the auction will get to meet writers at the prestigious Guardian Hay Festival being held later this month on the Welsh border.

Every penny raised in the auction will go towards helping the National Library for the Blind to bring the magic of reading to the 2 million visually impaired people in the UK who can't read standard print.

With less than 5% of books published annually in the UK ever produced in Braille, audio or large print, there is a serious shortage of reading material available for visually impaired people - making the work that NLB does essential.

Charlie Higson is one of the authors who is donating his time for the event. He said: "I'm really pleased to be able to help raise money for such a good cause. The National Library for the Blind does some really wonderful work, and I'm hoping that lots of people get on to eBay and start bidding right now!"

The auction will be running live on the internet site eBay until Monday 23 May and can be reached via a link from NLB's website or directly at Ebay.

Claire Briscoe, Press and PR Officer for the National Library for the Blind said: "We are delighted that so many authors have decided to support our fundraising auction and we are hoping that fans will dig deep for the chance to meet their favourite writer. As we do not receive any regular government funding, NLB is completely dependent on fundraising in order to continue to provide our service to visually impaired people. We are hoping the charity auction will help us to be able to put even more titles into Braille for visually impaired people to read."

Thanks to `JP` for the alert.