The annual Edinburgh literary highlight scampers on today with some big names.
Ruth Davidson will be speaking with Alexander McCall Smith from his garden at 10. We were worried about how that would work as the heavens have opened here in Edinburgh this morning, but it is prerecorded. Don’t miss it though as it will not be shown on demand like many other sessions.
Scottish politician Davidson joins McCall Smith in the garden of his Edinburgh home for a socially-distanced chat about life, the universe and pretty much everything – including How To Raise An Elephant, the latest in his No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, The Talented Mr Varg, the second in a captivating new series featuring the world’s kindest detective, and Tiny Tales, his beautiful, eclectic new collection of short stories.
Programme for today: Monday 24 August
10:00am Alexander McCall Smith with Ruth Davidson: For the Love of Humankind
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NB This event will NOT be available On Demand
11:30am Nadine Aisha Jassat & Tsitsi Dangarembga: Outriders Africa Following in their Footsteps
This is an audio event – to listen click here
1:00pm Ross Benjamin & Daniel Kehlmann: When History Prefigures Our Own Times
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2:30pm Yiyun Li: One-way Correspondence
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4:00pm Kathleen Jamie, Chitra Ramaswamy & Amanda Thomson: Antlers of Water
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5.30pm Billy-Ray Belcourt & Mary Jean Chan: Words Will Set You Free
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7.00pm Anne Applebaum: Democracy Under Siege
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8:30pm David Eagleman: A Mind-Blowing Future
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Programme for tomorrow: Tuesday 25 August
10:00am Iain MacRitchie & Rich Thanki: Healing the Digital Divide
Rich Thanki, Co-Founder of Jangala, the organisation that delivered WIFI to the refugees in the ‘Calais Jungle,’ joins Iain MacRitchie, CEO of MCR Pathways – who provided 300 laptops for digitally excluded young people across Scotland – to consider what can and must be done to remedy the digital divide.
This event is part of Citizen, our long-term creative programme working in partnership with organisations across Edinburgh, and offering local people a platform to explore identity, connection, place and everything it means to live in our world right now.
Supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery
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11:30am Michel Faber: The ‘Evil Is In The ‘Etail
One of Scotland’s most gifted and unpredictable writers, Michel Faber has always defied categorisation. D is his most shape-shifting book yet, a political adventure that will be enjoyed by children and adults alike. Its heroine is brave, resourceful Dhikilo who lives in a faded English seaside town. When the letter ‘d’ suddenly disappears from the alphabet and only Dhikilo notices it’s gone, she embarks on a journey to the land of Liminus to get the ‘d’ back.
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1:00pm Selva Almada: Giving Voice to the Victims of Femicide
One of a rising generation of talented Argentine writers, Selva Almada burst onto the English-language book scene last year with the publication of The Wind that Lays Waste, a short but highly-charged novel that won the Book Festival’s 2019 First Book Award. She returns with a searing, devastating hybrid book which could be described as journalistic fiction or fictional journalism.
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2:30pm Maryse Condé & Richard Philcox: Giving Voice to Guadeloupe
At 83, Maryse Condé is one of the most significant voices of our time. The Guadeloupean novelist, critic and playwright has had a career festooned with honours and awards, including the New Academy Prize in Literature, the substitute for the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature. Her new book (translated from French by her translator and husband Richard Philcox) is The Wondrous and Tragic Lives of Ivan and Ivana. Written in the shadow of the Charlie Hebdo attack, it is a searing novel about the resistance of binaries.
This is an audio event – to listen click here
4:00pm Richard Holloway: The Human Need for Stories
How do we get through the muddling, messy experience of life? How do we make meaning in an apparently meaningless universe when we are one tiny speck in an infinity of galaxies, a flickering moment of life in a billion years of the space-time continuum? Full of his trademark compassion and eloquence, Holloway’s new book shows how the stories we tell ourselves are the fundamental building block in our construction of meaning.
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5:30pm Retelling Tales with Joseph Coelho, Juno Dawson & Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Three incredible retellings from three outstanding authors: join them to hear more about why they were compelled to revamp classic tales for today’s readers.
This event is part of the Baillie Gifford Children’s Programme
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7:00pm Olivia Laing: Art is Political
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency is more than just a collection of Olivia Laing’s essays over decades. Ranging from interviews and profiles to reflections and confessionals, Laing’s characteristic generosity of spirit and optimism of purpose inspires hope in the midst of the unsettling weather of the present emergency.
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8.30pm Helen Macdonald: The Natural World Beyond ‘H is For Hawk’
When H is for Hawk won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and became an international bestseller, nobody was more surprised than author Helen Macdonald. Now she is back with Vesper Flights, a series of thoughtful essays about her relationship with an array of other living things. Ranging from mushrooms, glow-worms, deer and hares to falcons, swans and swifts (and even a few humans), Macdonald’s essays exist at the intersection of nature and politics.
NB This event will NOT be available On Demand.
To watch this event – click here
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
