The Book Festival’s first Citizen Schools Writer in Residence, the poet and novelist Claire Askew, summarises her inspiring experience working with three Edinburgh high schools to explore ideas of belonging and identity. The Citizen Schools programme was wide-reaching in its first year: I was invited to engage with three very different groups of young people from three different schools in …
Join in with Citizen @ North Edinburgh Arts
A feast of fun, food, and stories for all awaits as we hold a celebration of our Citizen programme, including loads of free activities and a special performance from two top musicians.
Meet The Hate U Give Author Angie Thomas
The author of the bestselling, award-winning The Hate U Give launches new novel On the Come Up in Edinburgh with the Book Festival.
Two special events in November
Yesterday we announced two exciting new events for the autumn. Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and bestselling writer of The Essex Serprent, Sarah Perry, both come to Edinburgh in November.
ReimagiNation brings the New Towns to the Book Festival
Alongside some of the biggest names in global literature, sport and politics, we’re thrilled to bring the voices of Scotland’s New Towns to the stage as part of our ReimagiNation events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Superstar authors arrive in autumn
As well as taking the Edinburgh International Book Festival around the country throughout the year, Booked! brings major book events to Edinburgh beyond August too – and this autumn we’re hosting events with two world-renowned writers. On Sunday 17 September, we welcome the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author, Orhan Pamuk, to discuss his latest novel, The Red-Haired Woman, while Man Booker winner …
Jeffrey Archer
At the core of Booked! is a desire to expand engagement with literature and book events in communities across the country. Readers come in all flavours and we passionately believe in providing something for everyone. The opportunity to host global publishing behemoth Jeffrey Archer for a one-off event in Scotland offered a rare chance to reach readers across the country …
HMP Edinburgh and Greenock
Booked! and the Book Festival have a longstanding commitment to engaging prison inmates in literary and cultural activities. Building on the success of an event with musician Edwyn Collins last year, we continued our relationship with HMP Edinburgh with another Booked! event in 2016. As a reformed convicted murderer who completed a life sentence, author Erwin James was a particularly …
Irvine Welsh & Robert Carlyle
In celebration of the launch of his latest novel The Blade Artist, we welcomed Leith’s own literary superstar Irvine Welsh to the Usher Hall in Edinburgh – and he didn’t come alone! As filming gets underway on Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting sequel, it was a treat to hear Begbie himself — Scottish screen icon Robert Carlyle — read from the novel, which explores …
The Biggest Book Show On Earth 2016
To celebrate this year’s World Book Day, we hosted as many as 2000 Edinburgh school pupils at The Usher Hall for a day with great authors, illustrators and story tellers. We caught up with some of them afterwards, including How To Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell and comedian-turned-author David Baddiel, to find out what they loved to read as …
The Crocodiamond
The Crocodiamond brought together pupils at Sandaig Primary School in Glasgow with author and illustrator Debi Gliori, a storyteller and four musicians from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The children worked with these artists to create images which would visually tell the story of The Crocodiamond, a tale written by acclaimed children’s author Anthony Horowitz, set to music by innovative composer …