Interview - Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Cosslett (2014)

Jura Unbound: Literary Death Match (2013 event) Four talented author-illustrator teams pit their live storytelling skills against one another in this all-star cartoon caper version of the legendary Literary Death Match… Paul Lynch: Let Awake People Be Awake Paul Lynch describes his 2023 Booker Prize-winning Prophet Song as an ‘attempt at radical empathy’. Nicola Sturgeon discusses the power of fiction to illuminate the possible with this writer at the top of his game… Yiyun Li: One-way Correspondence Yiyun Li is a writer who is as playful and dexterous as she is shrewdly literary, applying her sheer talent with intimacy and empathy, and playing with notions of truth and fiction. Her 2017 memoir, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life… Amin Maalouf & Jonathan Sacks: Rediscovering Our Moral Compass How can we rediscover human solidarity when the world feels like it has lost its way? The European Union is under extreme strain, the US has lost its moral credibility, and the world is so divided that it seems unable to address global threats to the… Robin Niblett & Yuan Yang: Shaping Our Century Former director of Chatham House, Robin Niblett, who in The New Cold War describes the ongoing geopolitical contest between the US and China. The Financial Times’ Beijing bureau chief Yuan Yang, whose Private Revolutions traces the lives of four Chinese… Rachel Cusk: A Carousel of Lives Rachel Cusk is arguably one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British literature, widely celebrated for her ability to fold the momentous into the seemingly mundane. The celebrated author of the Outline trilogy returns to the Festival… Writers Network Showcase: Scotland's Heritage, Then and Now 'The report that only the poets can make' wrote James Baldwin in 1962. In 2020’s global climate, what might a report by Scottish writers look like? How can poetry speak back to Scotland’s literary heritage and complex relationships with nature… A N Wilson: Coming to Terms A N Wilson was at the first Edinburgh International Book Festival 40 years ago. Since then, he has produced millions of words of journalism, 20 novels and a barrage of biographies. Yet somehow he looks back and sees ‘a life of failed promises’… Brit Bennett: How the Other Twin Lives For a novel that begins in 1968, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half may well be the timeliest fiction book of the year. Back in 2014, following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Bennett wrote an essay for Jezebel called ‘I don’t know what… David Crystal (2015 Event) A linguist and an expert on the development of the English language, David Crystal presents two books that tell us a great deal about English as it is spoken in the 21st century. You Say Potato looks at accents and our different ideas about ‘correct&…