The original London Bookshop Crawl, est. 2016
Founders & organisers of Canterbury Children's Literature Festival
Bex Hughes is our founding director, and alongside her voluntary directorship, is also employed by the CIC, and is group leader and facilitator for the majority of our events.
Bex is an avid pursuer of ideas and hobbies (why have one when you could have seven?). She spends all of her money on books and plants and cake and suffers from a perpetual lack of bookshelf space. She has ADHD and social anxiety and calls herself an extroverted introvert. She is addicted to Gilmore Girls and watches more reality TV than is probably good for her!
Our Directors
Charlie Russell was our first unrelated director, when we became a CIC in 2025. She is a local artist and member of our community.
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Esther Ushe is Bex's sister and has been our co-conspirator and graphic designer since the start. She came on board as a director in 2026.
She is a graphic designer/librarian who firmly believes that books are for everyone. She is full of madcap ideas and relishes the chance to turn them into beautiful things. She loves reading despite battles with dyslexia and is an enthusiastic advocate for comics, graphic novels, ebooks and audiobooks. She is AuDHD and permanently has too many projects on the go.
Hilary Francis is an enthusiastic member of our bookshop crawl community, who came on board as a director in 2026
She has lost track of how many crawls she has been on so far. She loves seeing new places and having an excuse to buy books, especially as she can support independent book shops at the same time.
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As a director she is hoping to be able to support the continuation and growth of the CIC. She has had so much pleasure herself that she would love to help more people find out about such a fun thing to do.
Katy Harad has been a regular member of our bookshop crawl community for several years, and joined us as a director in 2026.
She has been attending bookshops crawls and book groups for a few years now. And can't resist volunteering for things, so she started making suggestions and then started co-running an occasional bookish board games afternoon, and so it made sense to apply to be a Director. She is excited to be helping behind the scenes as well as being a punter!
In her non-bookish life she works for the NHS, She have two daughters and spends as much time as possible going to the theatre.
Louisa Mellor came on board as a director in 2026, supporting Canterbury Children's Literature Festival and our expansion of teen events.
Louisa is a writer, translator and former English teacher who first encountered Bookshop Crawl UK as a volunteer for Canterbury Children's Literature Festival. She loves long sleeves weather, Kate Atkinson, Elizabeth Strout, David Nicholls and Sue townsend. When she grows up she wants to be Anne Shirley.
Rhys Hughes is our co-founder, and Bex's husband. He comes from a background in fundraising and marketing, and brings a solid dose of creative realism to the enterprise! He is also one of our most prolific group leaders.
Rhys is mostly found trying not to trip over books on the staircase. He has been a sounding board for ideas since the beginning of bookshop crawl UK, and was the originator of the idea which became Canterbury Children's Literature Festival. He loves graphic novels, terry pratchett and middle grade adventure stories (for research for the lit fest, of course) and is a big fan of Dr Who and Star WArs.
