Jackie Kay

Limmy (2017 Event) The short, sharp and funny shock has been Brian Limond aka Limmy’s forte ever since breaking through with his World of Glasgow web series in 2006. After a Scottish BAFTA-winning TV show, Limmy has turned his attention to books of tiny tales (some… Johann Hari (2015 Event) It’s a century since drugs were first banned in the United States, thus unleashing a war against narcotics that has raged ever since. Journalist Johann Hari conducted a three-year investigation into the reality of drugs and now presents Chasing the… Irma Kurtz (2014 event) For four decades, the Cosmo Agony Aunt has been helping to solve readers’ problems, encompassing everything from eating disorders to bad behaviour in the office. In My Life in Agony, In this event, recorded live at the 2014 Edinburgh International… Andrew Marr The first ever visit to the Book Festival by the BBC's Political Editor was our fastest selling event in 2005. Andrew Marr talks about his trade and brings inside stories from the world of politics - expect colourful descriptions of Westminster… Kevin Barry (2016 Event) Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for ‘fiction at its most novel’. The phrase seems apt: even though this is a story built from familiar elements – an imagined John Lennon, post-Beatles in 1978, trying to pay a visit to an isle off… Eleanor Thom reading Sassuolo The young Glasgow-based writer reads her contribution to our Elsewhere project - a collection of new writing on the theme of Elsewhere… Paul Mendez & Derek Owusu: Thorny Intersections (2020 Event) How do you get the upper hand on a world you don’t yet understand? That’s the burning question at the heart of two striking debuts that scrape away the coming-of-age clichés, breathing through the aches and pains of growing up. With echoes of early… Lewis Alsamari - with Marina Nemat Iraqi exile Lewis Alsamari and Iranian Marina Nemat both wrote deeply moving and personal accounts of their experiences of escape to the West… Robert Coover (2011 Event) The reissue of his early novels as Penguin Classics in 2011 underlines his status as a giant of American literary postmodernism. Stories like Spanking the Maid, Gerald's Party and Pricksongs and Descants show that a mordant… Anne Applebaum: Democracy Under Siege (2020 Event) ‘Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will.’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Anne Applebaum’s bleak prognosis for liberal democracy lies at the heart of…