From this month’s Women of the World gathering on London’s South Bank to many smaller bespoke festivals and competitions, the demand for public events and festivals centred on the female experience is growing across Britain.

Now a group of 16 prominent women that includes writer Kit de Waal, broadcaster Sandi Toksvig, editor Sabeena Akhtar and BBC comedy chief Sioned Wiliam is to announce the creation of a new literary event, the Primadonna festival, which will be staged in Suffolk this summer and is designed to put women’s writing in the foreground. For its organisers, the event is a way to redress a faulty gender balance in publishing.

“We want to include the kind of women who are often left out,” said one of the founders, author and activist Catherine Mayer. She points to an enduring weighting towards male writers in the publishing and book promotion businesses: “There is an imbalance from the first about who is at the table when decisions are made. We want to work around that, so we will have well-known writers introducing less well-known ones.”

Thirty years ago, the group Women in Publishing revealed that male authors were the most often reviewed, and most often by men. The new festival, said Mayer this weekend, was born out of a chance conversation with former music industry executive Jane Dyball, who told Mayer there was scope for a new event at the Suffolk home she shares with her partner, Andy Corrigan of the band the Mekons. The couple already run music festivals in the grounds.

“It seemed clear that there was a real need to give a platform to writers who don’t always get heard,” said Dyball, who is deferring payment for the venue to help the launch and keep ticket prices down.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Novelist Kit de Waal is one of the founder members of the Primadonna festival. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

Mayer, a co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party, added that she is not surprised by the sudden proliferation of women’s cultural events. “There is such an appetite because there used to be so little,” she said.

“When we first set up the Wow festival nine years ago, I wondered if it would take off, but it quickly became a really big idea. And again nobody, not even the busiest people, have needed persuading to get involved with Primadonna.”

The new festival is also drawing on the expertise of two established festival coordinators, Jude Kelly, founder of the Wow festival, and Joanna Baker, the former managing director of the Edinburgh international festival.

Key attractions will include Professor Kate Williams speaking on Mary, Queen of Scots, technologist Rachel Coldicutt on the shape of the future, and a panel devoted to TV hit Killing Eve with its author Luke Jennings, former Observer dance critic. There will also be a “flash fiction” competition of very short stories, with the prize of representation by literary agent Cathryn Summerhayes.

Other women’s cultural events this year include the inaugural Comedy Women in Print prize, to be announced in July and founded by Helen Lederer to boost exposure for female comic writers. The 12 writers on the longlist, announced this weekend, include Gail Honeyman for bestseller Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and debut author Asia Mackay, for Killing It, the story of a covert agent’s return to work after maternity leave.

May sees the Shoutout Live Women’s podcast festival in Shoreditch, east London, and this month also saw the Bristol Women’s Literature festival and the 30th annual Oxford International Women’s festival. Diva magazine’s literary festival, due to take place in Birmingham, has been postponed due “to the uncertainty surrounding Brexit”, which organisers say has led to a falling away of sponsorship.

• This article was amended on 31 March and 1 April 2019 to: correct the spelling of a name; and clarify the headline.

The first Primadonna festival will run from 30 August to 1 September at Stowmarket, Suffolk