Interning with Edinburgh International Book Festival 2021
14th October 2021In this guest blog, Josephine Jay, who has been interning with the Book Festival for the last six months, reflects on her experiences....
Taking the Book Festival to Scottish Prisons
1st October 2021Find out more about our engagement with prisons across Scotland during the Book Festival this August...
Citizen Events at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2021
22nd September 2021With the 2021 Festival now behind us, we look back on our most recent Citizen events. Read on to find out how you can catch up on anything you missed this August!...
Tollcross Stories – Portraits and Audio Trail
13th August 2021As the Book Festival moves to its new location at Edinburgh College of Art, we wanted to find out more about the area from local people who live, work and have grown up in the Tollcross area. Listen to their reflections, memories and...
Working with Calibre Audio
9th August 2021We are working to ensure several of the books in this year's August Festival Programme are available on the Calibre Audio platform. Read on to find out more about Calibre Audio....
Spotlight on our Community Programme in August
30th July 2021Take a look at the Citizen events that are coming up in the August Book Festival programme, and find how we are taking the joy of the Festival to those who can't join us in person....
R-Words meets Citizen and Story Nation
22nd July 2021Several community writing groups have been creating inspiring group poems as part of the R-Words project....
Citizen with the Saheliya Champions
23rd June 2021We reflect on our five online Citizen sessions with Saheliya, an organisation which supports and promotes the positive mental health and well-being of Black, minority ethnic, asylum seeker, refugee and migrant women and girls (12+) in...
Snapshots from Spartans
28th May 2021Explore the Zine created by young people at Spartans Alternative School, which uses original photographs and writing to show us a snapshot of their world....
Storytelling at the new Royal Hospital for Children & Young People
12th May 2021This week we're celebrating the first of our in-person Story Nation activities at Sick Kids, with interactive storytelling sessions led by Andy Cannon...
Sign up to The Citizen Collective summer sessions
5th May 2021The next batch of sessions of The Citizen Collective is just around the corner. If you're Edinburgh-based, aged 16-18 and love creative writing, join us!...
How To Make Friends With Floating Heads
29th April 2021Lucy uses this guest blog to reflect on her experience of being part of The Citizen Collective. This community of creative writers have only ever met online: what this might mean for life beyond the Zoom Room?...
World Book Night and Reading Hour
21st April 2021World Book Night is on Friday 23 April, with #ReadingHour taking place between 7-8pm. Find out how we're celebrating this year and how you can get involved....
The Citizen Map of Musselburgh
15th March 2021Explore our map and listen to audio recordings of creative writing by local Musselburgh residents, inspired by the town's sights and sounds....
A teenager’s pandemic
4th March 2021In this guest blog, Hollie from The Citizen Collective shares her view of what it's like to be a teenager living through a pandemic...
Our commitment to accessibility
19th February 2021The Book Festival is moving to a new site, but accessibility remains a key priority for the Festival in 2021 and in the future....
Reflecting on 2020: Community, Covid, and Courage
21st December 2020Our Communities Programme Director, Noëlle Cobden, reflects on her first 12 months leading our year-round work in Edinburgh, the Lothians and beyond. Read on for her highlights of a strange year, how we pivoted our communtiy work to...
Citizen Winter Warmer activities still available online
16th December 2020Catch up with all the fun from our Citizen Winter Warmer, follow the links to DrawAlongs, workshops, performances and tutorials from the weekend's activities....
Citizen Winter Warmer
1st December 2020On Saturday 12 December Edinburgh International Book Festival will be holding a day of online activities with authors, illustrators and talented local writers for our Citizen Winter Warmer....
Citizen Goes Online
4th November 2020Last week we launched The Citizen Collective, an online creative writing initiative for young people across four local high schools. We're also starting an online writing group for adults in North Edinburgh and Musselburgh...
Looking back: Spotlight on Citizen Events
21st October 2020In this blog, we highlight three Citizen events from the August 2020 Book Festival Online which examine what 'community' means in a time of crisis...
Precious objects inspire Citizen writers
9th October 2020Listen to the work of two of our Brunton Citizen writers, where they take precious objects as a starting point for a piece of reflective writing....
Where Dandelions Go: the film
1st October 2020Here we're sharing in full the story written by children and families from North Edinburgh, in collaboration with Craigroyston Primary School, North Edinburgh Arts, and our Communities Writer in Residence, Eleanor Thom....
“A citizen is…” – your responses in poetry
16th September 2020Discover a new poem, Citizen, created with ideas from our Stories & Scran participants, put together by Leyla Josephine...
Creative challenge: turning fridge magnets into poetry
8th September 2020We challenged our Citizen collaborators to create some poetry using 30 randomly-allocated fridge magnet words. Here we share Karen's response to the challenge and tell you how you can give it a go at home....