Interview - Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Cosslett (2014)

Jonathan Safran Foer (2016 Event) The bestselling US author of Everything is Illuminated launches his first novel in 11 years. Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am is the story of a fracturing New York family, set against the backdrop of a much wider catastrophe as an earthquake engulfs the… Mat Osman: The Fickle Friend of Fortune A founding member of Suede and the brother of chart-topping crime fiction sensation Richard Osman, Mat Osman visits Edinburgh to discuss his hugely exciting second book The Ghost Theatre. A dazzling punk re-imagining of Elizabethan London, this historical… Jura Unbound: Literary Death Match (2013 event) Four talented author-illustrator teams pit their live storytelling skills against one another in this all-star cartoon caper version of the legendary Literary Death Match… Jackie Kay: My Libidinous, Raunchy, Fearless Blueswoman ‘Bessie Smith showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.’ And Janis Joplin was certainly not the only person who fell in love with the Tennessee blues singer’s unforgettable voice. As a young Black girl growing up in Glasgow, Jackie Kay found in… Ian Rankin at the 2019 Edinburgh International Book Festival There’s no stopping Rebus. Ian Rankin’s iconic detective has recently made a stage debut in Long Shadows and will be resurrected on TV in a new series by Black Watch playwright Gregory Burke. The latest Rebus novel, In a House of Lies, is one of the… Doireann Ní Ghríofa: A Ghost in the Throat The narrator in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat is acutely conscious that she’s occupying a female body, and that her body is itself a kind of ‘female text’ that bears witness to her life experiences. But A Ghost in the Throat is also a female… Howard Jacobson (2015 Event) A welcome return to Charlotte Square Gardens for the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2010 who was also shortlisted last year for his acclaimed Huxley-esque dystopian drama, J. Recently, Howard Jacobson has been reflecting in the media on one of his early… David Nicholls talks to Sally Magnusson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival The flush of first love and bittersweet summers on the cusp of adulthood are rich seams beautifully mined by novelist David Nicholls. The author of popular modern classics like Starter for Ten and One Day takes us into the heart of 16 year old Charlie… Scholastique Mukasonga: Reclaiming Rwanda’s Stories The genocide of 1994 in Rwanda continues to cast a long shadow over the country – and over its European colonisers. Belgian colonists and missionaries originally favoured Rwanda’s minority Tutsi people (even devising an ‘ethnic identity card’ in 1931) but… Mara Menzies: A Story of Identity Perhaps because it is such a natural human impulse, storytelling has sometimes been overlooked as an art form. Yet we are content to take it for granted as a building block for films, plays and the written word. Mara Menzies is a performance storyteller…