Today it is typical book festival weather and the rain is set to pour down all day today and there is a yellow weather warning. So snuggle down on your sofa and watch these events from the comfort of your own home.
Most events are available to watch again.
Programme for today: Tuesday 25 August
10:00am Iain MacRitchie & Rich Thanki: Healing the Digital Divide
To watch this event – click here
11:30am Michel Faber: The ‘Evil Is In The ‘Etail
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1:00pm Selva Almada: Giving Voice to the Victims of Femicide
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2:30pm Maryse Condé & Richard Philcox: Giving Voice to Guadeloupe
This is an audio event – to listen click here
4:00pm Richard Holloway: The Human Need for Stories
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5:30pm Retelling Tales with Joseph Coelho, Juno Dawson & Kiran Millwood Hargrave
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7:00pm Olivia Laing: Art is Political
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8.30pm Helen Macdonald: The Natural World Beyond ‘H is For Hawk’
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NB This event will NOT be available On Demand
Programme for tomorrow: Wednesday 26 August
10:00am Time Travelling with Patience Agbabi & Ben Miller
Ever wondered what it might be like to be a time traveller? Leap into a black hole or jump through time in this event with authors Patience Agbabi and Ben Miller, as they unleash their new books.
This event is part of the Baillie Gifford Children’s Programme
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11:30am Nadine Aisha Jassat, Sabrina Mahfouz & Amanda Thomson: Outriders Africa – Cape Town, From Art to Ancestry
As part of the Book Festival’s Outriders programme exploring the shifting landscapes of contemporary Africa, three UK-based writers with razor-sharp perspectives traversed the breathtaking landscapes of South Africa’s Cape Town. While their journey was sadly cut short due to COVID-19, that won’t stop these incisive voices from sharing their experiences.
This is an audio event – to listen click here
1:00pm Adania Shibli: When the Present is Haunted by the Past
A novel in two parts, Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail is superbly translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette. This, the author’s third novel, is undoubtedly going to lead to the international recognition Shibli deserves, especially because of a conclusion that JM Coetzee has described as ‘heart-stopping.’ In this conversation with Pakistani novelist Fatima Bhutto, Shibli explains the background to her extraordinary book.
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2:30pm Jo Hunter & John Loughton: Power to the People
Jo Hunter established 64 Million Artists, an organisation that aims to encourage everybody in the UK to discover their creativity, John Loughton’s organisation Scran Academy flipped from training young people in catering skills to becoming a crisis-response catering company, providing more than 100,000 free meals to people across Edinburgh. Hunter and Loughton join the Book Festival’s Communities Programme Director, Noëlle Cobden, to discuss how they made the necessary changes to support and serve their communities during a global pandemic and what ‘community’ means in a post-COVID-19 world.
This event is part of Citizen, our long-term creative programme working in partnership with organisations across Edinburgh, offering local people a platform to explore identity, connection, place and everything it means to live in our world right now. Find out more at ontheroad.edbookfest.co.uk.
This event is Supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery
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4:00pm Wayétu Moore: Setting Liberia’s History Free
In 19th century Liberia, extreme powerlessness meets extraordinary powers in Wayétu Moore’s magical and magisterial debut She Would Be King. Melding historical record with magic realism and fantastical elements, Moore weaves an extraordinary retelling of the formation and early years of Liberia. As well as being an adept writer, Wayétu Moore is the founder of a publishing non-profit dedicated to providing culturally relevant books to children who are underrepresented in literature.
This event is sponsored by The Skinny
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5:30pm Douglas Stuart: The Making of Shuggie Bain
This astonishing debut is a powerful and heartbreaking story about the love between a boy and his mother, about poverty and addiction, about Thatcher’s Glasgow, about sexuality, coming of age and finding one’s way. Roaming through public housing, wandering in and out of pubs and neighbourhoods, it asks how we might protect those we love most of all, and at what cost. Shuggie Bain has been longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
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7.00pm International Booker Prize: First Interview with the 2020 Winner
Join us for this very special event – it is the first public interview the winning author and translator will give after the announcement is made on the morning of 26 August – with the Chair of the judging panel, Ted Hodgkinson.
This event is supported by the 2020 International Booker Prize
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8:30pm Alain Mabanckou: Rewriting the Congolese Story
The luminary Mabanckou talks to award-winning writer, critic and cultural journalist Maya Jaggi, reflecting on the highs and lows of a career spanning four decades, and his enduring ability to boil the sweeping grand narratives of African history into exuberant, mischievous family dramas.
To watch this event – click here
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
