All Events

There are events for just about every age and interest at the Book Festival, bringing readers and writers together for inspiration, entertainment and discussion. Over 900 authors appear in around 800 events, including novelists, poets, scientists, sportsmen, illustrators, comics creators, historians, musicians, biographers, Nobel and Booker prize-winners and many more besides.

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    Browse this year's themes

    Nothing But the Poem on Raymond Antrobus

    Reading Workshop

    Wednesday 14 August 13:00 - 14:30

    Nothing But the Poem on Raymond Antrobus
    British Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry last year for The Perseverance. His compelling poetry deals with family life, the death of his father, his diagnosis with deafness and his biracial heritage. Our...

    Richard Holloway

    Stories We Told Ourselves

    Wednesday 14 August 13:30 - 14:30

    Richard Holloway
    As this year's Festival theme suggests, we need new stories to make sense of a changing world that sometimes seems to make no sense at all. In this keynote contribution to the Festival, Richard Holloway explains why stories have been a critical tool for...

    Outriders: Jenni Fagan & Harry Josephine Giles

    The Journey is the Destination

    Wednesday 14 August 13:45 - 14:45

    Outriders: Jenni Fagan & Harry Josephine Giles
    In 2017, we sent ten writers across the Americas for Outriders, a project of complex journeys, exploring controversial themes during which the writers exchanged ideas. Ahead of Outriders Africa later this year, Jenni Fagan and Harry Josephine Giles...

    Laird Hunt & Michelle Steinbeck

    All Things Weird and Wonderful

    Wednesday 14 August 14:00 - 15:00

    Laird Hunt & Michelle Steinbeck
    Two bold novels use age-old literary tricks to get inside the heads of characters and readers alike. Laird Hunt’s In the House in the Dark of the Woods follows a woman lost in a dangerous wood and creates a shapeshifting story you’d be wise not to...

    Freedom of Imagination with Gulnar Hajo

    Age 4-7

    Wednesday 14 August 14:00 - 15:00

    Freedom of Imagination with Gulnar Hajo
    Free your mind with a book beautifully illustrated by Syrian-born Gulnar Hajo. Nour’s Escape follows a little girl with no family, no home and seemingly no escape. But as the story criss-crosses fantasy and reality, you’ll discover how freeing a...

    The Divan Sessions: The West-Eastern Divan

    Poetic Conversations

    Wednesday 14 August 14:15 - 15:15

    The Divan Sessions: The West-Eastern Divan
    Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan, the poet’s personal attempt to broaden European horizons by exploring the concept of the Other and creating a poetic dialogue between East and West, marks its 200th anniversary this year. Persian academic Narguess Farzad...

    Big Cat Creations

    All Ages

    Wednesday 14 August 14:30 - 16:30

    Big Cat Creations
    ROARRRR! Drop in and join Big Cat author Emma Lazell to help her create a very big Big Cat. Make sure you place him in his natural surroundings with lots of green and leafy collaging – and be sure to remember to give him his stripes.

    Chris Mullin

    Brexit: Couldn’t Make it Up

    Wednesday 14 August 15:15 - 16:15

    Chris Mullin
    Former Labour MP and writer Chris Mullin returns to the murky political world of his bestselling classic A Very British Coup, in new novel The Friends of Harry Perkins. Brexit is complete, yet the nation remains divided. Fred Thompson, former aide to...
    Changed

    Sylva Fischerová & Alan Spence

    Meeting of Poetical Minds

    Wednesday 14 August 15:30 - 16:30

    Sylva Fischerová & Alan Spence
    Two prolific European poets come together. Edinburgh Makar Alan Spence adds to his illustrious career of novels, short stories and poems with two new pamphlet collections Zenscotlit and Thirteen Ways of Looking at Tulips. Prague’s City Poet Sylva...

    Nessie Reimagined with Lari Don & Sara Sheridan

    Age 14+

    Wednesday 14 August 15:45 - 16:45

    Nessie Reimagined with Lari Don & Sara Sheridan
    What is the process of turning an idea into a book? How can the same idea appear as very different stories? Meet two Edinburgh authors, each putting their spin on the legend of the Loch Ness Monster. Lari Don’s The Treasure of the Loch Ness Monster...

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