Explore the Festival programme

The Edinburgh International Book Festival takes place from 9-24 August 2025. The programme will be available in June. Sign up for our ebulletins or follow us on social media to hear announcements and updates.

In the meantime, you can enjoy watching Festival events on the website, have a look at our Festival photographs, listen to or download free podcasts of event recordings and watch exclusive interviews and Festival highlights from past Book Festivals on our YouTube channel and your favourite podcast platforms.

2024 Book Festival Highlights

EIBF - Phographer- Aly Wight - Sun 11-08-24 - File-7530
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EIBF - Phographer- Aly Wight - Sat 10-08-24 - File-7139
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Look, Listen & read

Paul Lynch: Let Awake People Be Awake

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…

Michel Faber: The ‘Evil Is In The ‘Etail (2020 Event)
Michel Faber: The ‘Evil Is In The ‘Etail (2020 Event)

Reminiscent of Charles Dickens and of Lewis Carroll, Michel Faber’s fable D is a delightful sideways look at the evils of our times. He joins us to discuss Dhikilo’s wild odyssey…

Olivia Laing: Art is Political (2020 Event)
Olivia Laing: Art is Political (2020 Event)

With Fiona Bradley, Director of the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Laing unpacks our political, emotional and creative selves in this event recorded live at the 2020 Book…

Total Freedom
Total Freedom by Carmen Maria Machado

In Borges’ 1939 essay “The Total Library,” which later served as the basis for his short story, “The Library of Babel,” he imagined a library of infinite books, created of every conceivable arrangement of a certain kind of universal alphabet…