The festival is held bi-annually and constitutes one of the major literary events in Iceland. In the 20 years since its inception in 1985 it has been visited by a number of the worlds best-known authors, such as Gunter Grass, Isabel Allende, Jose Saramago, Haruki Murakami, A. S. Byatt, Kurt Vonnegut, Fay Weldon, Paul Auster and many others.