Welcome to the Book Festival

Our next hybrid Book Festival will feature hundreds of events for adults and children, all with in-person audiences; many will also be streamed live on the website. The 2022 Edinburgh International Book Festival will take place at the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh College of Art on Lauriston Place in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town.

Many of the events in past Festival programmes, including a large selection from 2021, can be watched in the Look and Listen pages of the website.

The next Edinburgh International Book Festival will take place from 13-29 August 2022. The programme will be announced in June. Sign up for our ebulletins or follow us on social media to hear announcements and updates.

In the meantime, you can enjoy watching Festival events on the website, have a look at our Festival photographs, listen to or download free podcasts of event recordings and watch exclusive interviews and Festival highlights from past Book Festivals on our YouTube channel and your favourite podcast platforms.

2021 Book Festival Highlights

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Look, Listen & read

Deborah Levy: A Living Autobiography

‘What is the point of a risk-free life?’ asked Deborah Levy in the second of her recent memoirs – The Cost of Living – which details the creation of her new life after the breakdown of a marriage at the age of 50. Now, the celebrated novelist publishes her third and final memoir, Real Estate, as she approaches her 60th year. The title reflects Levy’s decision to swap her family home for a flat in an apartment block, and her subsequent dream of an alternative kind of ‘real estate’. Having made …