Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts

Friday, 30 September 2022

Edinburgh International book festival 2022 Review

Edinburgh Art college


Celebrates the enduring power of books. 

The bicycle racks are full at the book festival. Its now the second year at its new venue the Edinburgh Art college. With more of its usual buzz, with both in person and online events, there’s better children’s play area with a pirate ship and garden play area, and with more seating. It was a shock last year to move from Charlotte square gardens, where the Edinburgh International book festival took place from 1983 to 2019..

 

This year there were talks both in person and online.

In 2019 there were 900 events and now in 2022 events 600. With more streamlined events as expected less interest – as a result of the cost of accommodation and the pandemic.

 

Talks. At my first talk Edinburgh book festival, Irish writer Fintan O'Toole explored Ireland’s turbulent history from 1958 and whether Ireland might reunite. People wanting change while wanting things stay the same. But if we want things to stay the same things must change! The known and the unknown. 

American author Diana Gabaldon's talk was packed out and what an interesting lady! She was there to promote her 9th book in the Outlander saga - Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone. She was emotional when she spoke of working to protect the Gaelic language. 

Noam Chmsky explored the corporate press, and encouraging debate in his book Chronicles of Dissent 

Lea Yi, from Albania, spoke of her book Free, Coming of Age at the end of History.


Diana Gabaldon

Ocean Vuong

Good Grief
Omar Musa


*My EIBF talks included - Diana Gabaldon, Fintan O'Toole, Brian Cox, Oliver Bullough, Lea Yi, Good Grief, Noam Chomsky,

Bigger names – Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Maggie O’Farrell, Irvine Welsh, 

(No talks by historian Tom Devine this year unfortunately.)

 *Music

PJ Harvey, Martha Wainwright, Stuart Cosgrove, 

James Runchie, The story of Bach’s masterpiece

 

*Politics

Imagine a country, Val McDermid & Jo sharp. 

Murray Pittock, Old Scotia Grandeur springs

Yasha Mounk, The Great Experiment

Franks Dikotter, The Rise of a superpower

 

*EIBF encourages us to debate, question, and look for truths, via a wide range of writers from to academics, novelists, historians, journalists, politicians, artists, poets and more. 

Some might claim Edinburgh festivals are not radical enough. But the talks I’ve attended at the book festival this year covered many challenges – freedom in Albania, turbulent Ireland since 1958, challenging debates, and encouraging Scotland language and culture. 

 



**BOOKS

Maggie OFaarrell, The Marriage Portrait

Murray Pittock, Scotland’s stories now, On this day. Part of the year of stories 2022.

Irvine Welsh, The long Knives

Alan Riach – Scottish literature an introduction (Iain banks, Irvine welsh, Alasdair Gray, Hugh MacDiarmid, Dunbar, Robert Garioch, WN Hubert, Burns Scott, Hogg, romanticism marginalized look in.



Thursday, 30 June 2022

Edinburgh Book Festival 2022!



Edinburgh International Book Festival 2022 returns

with 600 events, 550 authors, 50 countries – under the banner “All Together Now”.

 

EIBF returns with a full program this year and hopes to recreate that buzz, after the Lockdowns. To build on the hybrid format developed over two years of pandemic – with live, in-person events also available to steam online.

 

For the first time since 2019, nearly all events will be live on stage in Edinburgh and will add a new venue at Central Hall - a 700+ seat theatre space in the heart of the city and a 5 minute walk from the Festival Village at Edinburgh College of Art.


 EIBF has re-located from its Charlotte square site (since 1982) – to save the 120 trees, the festival has been hurting their roots with the amount of foot fall: this has been an ecological decision. The festival’s new home will be the Edinburgh University Future’s building which will offer both enough indoor and outdoor space and a village green space.

This year the festival takes place at the Edinburgh art college Lauriston place.

 

*EIBF director Nick Barley  - “We’ve learned a great deal since 2019 – the world has changed immeasurably with the pandemic and war in Europe – but we’re also beginning to imagine what a better future should look like. Exploring these issues in inspiring conversations with scientists, historians, poets and novelists is exactly where the book festival comes into its own.

 

Ruby Wax

Nile Rodgers & Irvine Welsh




AUTHORS for 2022 – Ali Smith, Alexander McCall Smith, Julian Barnes.

Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa, Outlander Diana Gabaldon, linguist Noam Chomsky, director Armando iannucci. Meg Mason and many more.

FM Nicola sturgeon in conversation with Louise Welsh and Brian Cox (of Succession fame)

 

The festival plans to be more inclusive with Stories and Scarm – for all to tell our own stories, such a Syrian refugees. The festival has been encouraging people from all backgrounds. 


PLUS Val McDermid with her new book 89, which charts Scotland history via a thriller;  Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet, her new book set in the Medici Renaissance. 

Douglas Stuart, author of Young Mungo, in conversation with Ian Rankin, 

Music – Martha Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker, Vishti Bunyan, Ricky Ross, Stuart Cosgrove.


Alan Cummings




Also discussions on the role of Europe, impact of war with Ukrainian historian Sarhii Plokky.

**PLUS the large Children’s Book Festival with its

Baillie Gifford program – Julia Donaldson, Cressida Cowell, Michael Morpurgo. And new super heroes, Little Badman and Stunt Boy.

 

'Come together' for conversations with storytellers, musicians, politicians, actors, chefs, illustrators and more this August. Attend live in-person events in Edinburgh or watch events at home, 

**Tickets  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk

 

John Byrne

Ian Rankin


Alexander MacColl Smith


Seamus Heaney

Saturday, 31 July 2021

Edinburgh International book festival 2021


August 14-30 2021

After the challenging times, Edinburgh international book festival launches its 2021 program – "Onwards and Upwards" consisting of both online and live events.  With more than 250 events , including the extensive children’s program. 


TICKETS - 

 https://www.edbookfest.co.uk

 

EIBF Online events 

offer the opportunity to chat with fellow book lovers and connect with authors by asking questions in our live Q&As. You can also catch up on events at a time that suits, and online programme, so you needn't worry about missing out. 

Scottish authors include Tom Devine, Ali Smith, Alexander McCall Smith,  Ian Rankin, Douglas Stuart,

Including events with Nobel Prize winners Amartya Senand Kazuo IshiguroNgũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Booker Prize winners Salman RushdieBernardine EvaristoRichard Flanagan and Scotland's own Douglas Stuart (with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon) and many more.

The EIBF is the world’s premier book festival begun in 1982.

Edinburgh in a Unesco city of literature and each August EIBF welcomes a wide variety of authors  from Scotland and internationally. I’ve met many famous faces here, which at first is a strange experience.  


Words and stories are our passports to a better, fairer world. Imagination is free! Whether the words are carried in song, in poetry, in political debate, in images, or in stories, in fairy-tales, history, theories, journalism or truth. 


Thursday, 22 April 2021

Scotia’s Ties to Europe: Top Scots writers support Scots indy

 

Nicola Sturgoen & Val McDermid Edinburgh

Brexit, is an act of deep political folly.

Writers keep a light on hoping Scotland will return to EU.

 

TOP WRITERS speak out!

Some of Scotland’s top writers wrote of their deep sense of regret and loss at leaving the European union – an equal partnerships of sovereign nations – imposed on us by England. Brexit was take back control, is about London taking back control of the devolved nations of the UK.

 

All three pre-eminent Scots writers are supporters of Scottish indy. 

 

Professor Tom Devine, “ I am hopeful that our ancient country will once again be united with out European friends before too long. The Brexit battle is over, the struggle to return to the EU has just begun. For over 600 years between the 12th and early 18th century Scotland most intimate external relations were with Europe. That can be so again. It will be a black Friday for me, a sad and utterly irrational farewell to the EU, a decision which is fundamentally opposed by a very large majority of this ancient nation.’


Val McDermid - "Today is a day of deep mourning. Membership of the EU has improved our quality of life in so many areas form human rights to the vastly higher standards fo roads in the highlands and islands." 

 

Al Kennedy - "Brexit is being revealed ever more clearly as an English project, with an increasingly laser focused definition of what is permitted to be English. The idea that countries would unite on equal terms in any kind of collegiate organisation is incomprehensible. There are only colonies and the colonised. This betrays England and Englishness and leaves only the worst fo any nation - the freakish, the frightened, the racist and bigoted." 


The way ahead for Scotland will be difficult as it will be for all areas of the UK. Breaking away form a government with a desperately colonial mind-set will be complex and no doubt fraught with setbacks and betrayal. But Brexit has turned Scottish Indy within the EU into both a necessity and a real possibility.”

 

Glasgow university

Professor Tom Devine is Scotland’s premier historian and author of major books on Scottish history. He is the recipient of 3 national prizes for research on Scottish history. The senior Hume Brown prize,  Saltire society prize (1985), Henry Duncan prize Royal Society of Edinburgh (1993). Honorary membership of Scottish PEN (2020). Devine is considered one of the top academic and influencers.  “ The nations pre-eminent historian ,a towering and fearless intellect.” The Herald Scottish power 100. Professor Tom Devine, retired in 2015 as the chair of Scottish history and Palaeography university of Edinburgh. He continues his lectures in the UK and abroad. 

I’ve attended 3 of Devine’s lecture, which I enjoyed and benefited from. He is a supporter of Scottish indy.

 

Val McDermid, Scottish crime writer best known for a series of novels featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony hill in a grim sub-genre that McDermid and others have identified as tartan noir. She sings with the band Fun Loving Crime Writers.

 

AL Kennedy is a Scottish writer, academic and stand-up comedian. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction and is known for her dark tone, blending of realism and fantasy and for her serious approaches. She contributes columns and reviews to European newspapers.

 

 

Other writers who support Scottish indy include – 

William Mcllvanney, Alasdair Gray, Ian bell, Irvine Welsh, Iain Macwhirter, Alan Riach, Irvine Welsh,

Alan Bisset, Stuart Cosgrove Liz Lochhead, Lesley Riddoch, Ruth WIshart, Gerry Hassan,


Musicians who support Scottish Indy  - Aly Bain, Dick Gaughan, Annie Lennox, Proclaimers,

 

Scots actors who support Scots indy – Alan Cumming, Sean Connery, Sam Heughan, Brain Cox, David Tennent, Elaine C Smith. 


I’m amazed by the Scots history I’ve been totally unaware of until now – even though I studied education at Edinburgh university and took history higher at school. We were taught only English history. Yet Scots history is so incredibly interesting! 

 

Scottish Enlightenment - 

English historian Peter Gay argues that the Scottish Enlightenment "was a small and cohesive group of friends – David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and others – who knew one another intimately and talked to one another incessantly.’ 

Education was a priority in Scotland, both at the local level and especially in four universities that had stronger reputations than any in England. The Enlightenment culture was based on close readings of new books, and intense discussions that took place daily at such intellectual gathering places in Edinburgh as The Select Society and, later The Poker Club as well as within Scotland's ancient universities (St Andrew’s, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen). Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thorough going empiricism and practicality where the chief values were improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for the individual and society as a whole. Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, economics, history architecture, and medicine. Leaders included Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid, William Robertson, Henry Home, Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, John Playfair, Joseph Black and James Hutton. 

The Scottish Enlightenment influenced England and the American colonies, and to a lesser extent continental Europe.


Monday, 17 August 2020

Edinburgh Book festival 2020



Events this year are ONLINE and you can buy signed copies of the authors books. Certainly not the same as actually being there.....I'VE COVERED THE WORLD'S MAJOR BOOK FESTIVAL SINCE 2007, very strange not to be there.. 

 

 As we can't put on our usual 900+ event Festival this year in our lovely tented village in Charlotte Square Gardens, we've curated a special online edition. From 15-31 August, enjoy events for adults and children for free. Through the magic of technology, we’ll be crossing continents and time zones to beam events from more than 30 countries straight into your home. What’s more, you’ll be able chat with fellow Festival goers via digital chatrooms and take part in Q&A sessions, and you'll even be able to meet the author and get your books signed (selected events).

 





All events are free and available to watch here on our website. See events below. 'Save your place' on the event page and we'll email you a reminder just before it starts.

 

https://www.edbookfest.co.uk








Tuesday, 30 June 2020

Scots Top Ten!



According to the Sunday Times recently - 

Top Ten Films
Local Hero
Gregory’s girl
Whisky Galore
Prime o miss Jean Brodie
Trainspotting
Wicker Man
Braveheart
Shallow Grave
Geordie
Restless Heart
Del Amitri

Top Ten bands 
Proclaimers
Simple minds
Deacon Blue
The Blue Nile
Travis
The Waterboys
Runrig
Belle & Sebastian
Del Amitri
Iain Banks & Alex Salmond
William MclLivanney
Top Ten authors
Robert Louis Stevenson
JK Rowling
Walter Scott
Iain Banks
William MclLivanney
Muriel Sparks
Irvine Welsh
Alasdair Gray
John Buchan
Lewis Grassic Gibbons
Top Ten Artists
Charles Rennie Macintosh
Henry Raeburn
SJ Peploe
JD Fergusson
Joan Eardley
Jack Vitrianno
Eduardo Paolozzi
Alison Watt
Margaret Macdonald
John Lawrie Morrison

Top Ten Scots Songwriters
Robert Burns
Gerry Rafferty
Annie Lennox
Lewis Capaldi
Ricky Ross
Lulu
Fran Healy
Proclaimers

Monday, 30 September 2019

Black & White PHOTOs Edinburgh Book festival 2019

Inua Ellams
Edinburgh International Book festival, celebrates diversity and many different voices and backgrounds from across the globe. It is always good to see young, new voices given a platform to be heard.. 


Elizabeth Acevedo
Heida Ásgeirsdóttir
Isabella Hammad
Denise Mina
Rachel Long
Tania Nwachukwu
Hibaq Osman