How We Kept The Conversation Going in 2020

Alison Bechdel: Can Exercise Fix Us? Yoga with Adriene, wild-swimming, step-trackers, Strava: just a few of the trends that have dominated the fitness industry – and our lives – in recent years. What does our fitful relationship with exercise tell us about who we are today? American… William Dalrymple: When India Led the World A huge success as co-host with Anita Anand of the Empire podcast, looking at how empires rose and fell in history, best-selling Scottish-born, India-based historian William Dalrymple is about to publish The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the… Iain Sinclair at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Among our finest voices on the significance of place, Welsh writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair health checks our relationships with buildings across the world in Living with Buildings and Walking with Ghosts. From Marseille to Mexico, inner London to the… Tom Devine with Allan Little: Rewriting Scotland’s History During the 20th century, Scotland commonly depicted its own history through the lens of a kind of colourful, tragicomic victimhood. This amounted to a tartan-clad story set against a Highland backdrop and a sense of national self-doubt that has sometimes… Shokoofeh Azar: After the Iranian Revolution When Shokoofeh Azar received the news that she was the first ever Iranian writer to be shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, she was transported back to when she was 15 years old, ‘in the village, surrounded by rainforest and rice fields, and… Outriders: Ximena Escalante & Stef Smith (2017 Event) As part of our Outriders project to explore the Americas, leading Mexican playwright Ximena Escalante travelled across Mexico with Scottish theatre writer Stef Smith. Starting in the US city of San Diego, they journeyed south across the Mexican border… Colson Whitehead talks to Kirsty Wark at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Following the success of his book The Underground Railroad – named by Barack Obama as one of the most important books of his presidency – Colson Whitehead's new novel The Nickel Boys sees the Pulitzer Prize winning author visit 1960s Florida, a period of… Allan Little's Big Interview with Elif Shafak at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Turkish-British author Elif Shafak is a respected campaigner for women’s rights and free speech. She wrote in the New Yorker that ‘wave after wave of nationalism and tribalism have hit the shores of countries across Europe, and they have reached the… Chitra Ramaswamy: Homelands One of three major performances this year looking at today’s Scotland. Homelands is the new work of non-fiction by Chitra Ramaswamy and tells the story of the author’s friendship with Henry Wuga, who arrived in 1939 with the Kindertransport fleeing Nazi… Mexican Writing, An Insider's View with Gabriel Orozco - Essays (2015 Event) Artist Gabriel Orozco brings us two of Mexico's most highly-respected and best-known authors. Sergio González Rodríguez is a novelist and essayist famous for his groundbreaking writing about the serial murders of young women in the…