What's on | Edinburgh International Book Festival

Welcome to the Book Festival

Set in a specially created tented village in the heart of Edinburgh, the Edinburgh International Book Festival offers something for just about every age and interest, bringing readers and writers together for inspiration, entertainment and discussion.

The Book Festival welcomes around 1000 authors in over 900 events for adults and children each year including novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, sportsmen, illustrators, comic creators, historians, musicians, biographers, environmentalists, economists, Nobel and Booker prize-winners and many more besides.

The 2019 Book Festival will take place from 10-26 August.

Full details of the programme, including authors, themes and events with BSL interpretation and captioning will be available here from mid-June.

Request a brochure for the 2019 Festival

In the meantime, you can enjoy Festival photographs, listen to or download free podcasts of event recordings and watch exclusive interviews and Festival highlights from past Book Festivals here on our website, on our YouTube channel and on itunes.

2018 Book Festival Highlights

One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isobel Greenberg

Writing Biography - Creative Writing Workshop

View more photos

Look, Listen & read

Rose McGowan (2018 Event)

In 2018 the film industry, for so long a haven of misogyny and sexism, has found itself at the heart of a worldwide ‘cataclysmic global reckoning’, in which women everywhere are standing up defiantly against predatory male behaviour. In Brave, the American actress Rose McGowan recounts her fight against the Hollywood machine. In this event filmed at the 2018 Edinburgh International Book Festival, she talks to Afua Hirsch about her campaign to help all women reclaim their lives…