Edinburgh International Book Festival 2019 Highlights 13–16 August

Jo Hunter & John Loughton: Power to the People When Jo Hunter established 64 Million Artists, an organisation that aims to encourage everybody in the UK to discover their creativity, little did she know that in 2020 she would have to dramatically change the way they reached people. The ‘COVID-19 pivot’… Diana Gabaldon (2014 event) The Outlander books by Arizona-based author Diana Gabaldon have achieved sales figures that would make your eyes water. Little wonder that Doune Castle was recently besieged by fans keen to see the TV version being filmed. The latest instalment, Written… The New York Times Book Review: The Power of Words This year is the 125th anniversary of The New York Times Book Review, a key part of the paper’s coverage of culture and news since 1851. Francis Brown, who edited the Book Review for 21 years from 1949, described it as ‘the period of Trollope and Dickens… Melvyn Bragg at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg returns to the Festival with a fresh take on a classic love story. Novelist Arthur travels to Paris to retell the tale of Heloise and Abelard, 12th century lovers whose affair was doomed. The surprise appearance of his… Douglas Stuart with Val McDermid: Knives, Doves and Forbidden Love Shuggie Bain won the Booker Prize, sold over a million copies and catapulted Douglas Stuart to instant worldwide fame – his follow-up is doing nothing to dampen the hype. Set in the 1990s amid the brutal landscape of sectarian working-class Glasgow, Young… Writing Wrongs: Voices from the Queer Arab Vanguard Gender non-conforming and sexually diverse people are oppressed, persecuted and erased all over the world. The cultural concepts used to justify this — religious or secular, traditional or imported — are various, as are the histories that got us here. But… Heather McDaid & Nicola Sturgeon with Elif Shafak (2017 Event) Elif Shafak understands the challenges of public intellectual life: she was wrongly accused of ‘public denigration of Turkishness’ for her novel The Bastard of Istanbul. In this event recorded live at the 2017 Edinburgh International Book Festival, she… Jack Monroe: On Self-Care and Social Change To call Jack Monroe a cookbook writer would be to undersell her by several degrees of magnitude. From being a struggling single mother on a microbudget, she has built a career helping those who society has left behind. Fresh from pressuring supermarkets… Val McDermid & Jo Sharp: Shaping a Better Future At last year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, bestselling author Val McDermid and professor of geography Jo Sharp were inspired by the festival theme, We Need New Stories. So inspired, in fact, that they turned to a loveable rogues gallery of… Reading Scotland: James Robertson, Ghosts of the Glen We are thrilled to present the new novel by one of Scotland’s most gifted authors, James Robertson. Ever since the acclaimed And the Land Lay Still, readers have been waiting for another novel by Robertson that would articulate the changing spirit and…