Saturday 17 August 17:45 - 18:45
- Attend in person
- Captioned
‘A Russian doll of a book’ is how the Financial Times described Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X, a novel disguised in biographical form, riven with complexity and intrigue. When ‘X’, an iconoclastic artist dies suddenly, her grief-stricken...
Saturday 17 August 18:15 - 19:15
Sunday 18 August 15:15 - 16:15
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- Watch online
- Captioned
What happens when love surprises you later in life? How long can it last? Howard Jacobson, Booker-prize-winning author of The Finkler Question and author of more than twenty books besides, explores this, and more, in What Will Survive of Us: a tender...
Sunday 18 August 18:15 - 19:15
Sunday 18 August 19:00 - 20:00
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- Watch online
- Captioned
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.
Monday 19 August 17:00 - 18:00
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- Watch online
- Captioned
We welcome national treasure Alexander McCall Smith to the Festival to unveil his brand-new series, The Perfect Passion Company. McCall Smith is joined in conversation by chair, James Crawford.
Monday 19 August 18:45 - 19:45
- Attend in person
- Watch online
- BSL interpreted
Food gives us life, yet diet misinformation abounds. Bestselling author and epidemiologist Tim Spector is here to separate fact from fiction – and to reassure us that we can love our bodies and food equally. Drawing on new research, Food for Life is...
Tuesday 20 August 11:00 - 12:00
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- BSL interpreted
- Captioned
How can a deaf woman speak out in a hearing world? Sarah Marsh explores in a fascinating conversation this morning. Her debut novel, A Sign of Her Own, is an evocative story of connection, concealment, and betrayal about a deaf student of Alexander...
Tuesday 20 August 17:00 - 18:00
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- Watch online
- BSL interpreted
One of our finest contemporary writers, Colm Tóibín returns with Long Island: sequel to prize-winning masterpiece, Brooklyn. Penned with characteristic wit, compassion, and quietude, the novel reunites with Eilis Fiorello who is compelled to return to...
Tuesday 20 August 19:30 - 20:30
- Attend in person
- BSL interpreted
Former cellmate of Nelson Mandela and PM of the Western Cape, Ebrahim Rassol talks with his co-authors, Dr Houda Abadi and Mark Muller Stuart KC, about their new book, A Guide to Islamic Principles of Peace-Making, and why they are needed more than ever...
Wednesday 21 August 11:00 - 12:00
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- Captioned
Celebrated French author Anne Serre brings her new novel A Leopard-Skin Hat to the Festival. Already hailed ‘a masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance’ by Le Point, A Leopard-Skin Hat is the story of the narrator’s relationship with his...
Wednesday 21 August 14:15 - 15:15
- Attend in person
- BSL interpreted
The genesis for Hisham Matar’s latest novel began almost ten years ago when he scribbled two lines on the back of an envelope. The Booker-nominated, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return shares what happened in the in-between years to result in...
Wednesday 21 August 16:15 - 17:15
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- BSL interpreted
A short story specialist and winner of the 2022 EM Forster Award and the 2023 Walter Scott Prize, Lucy Caldwell talks to Peggy Hughes about her third collection, Openings, in which the Northern Irish writer continues to write about the contemporary...
Wednesday 21 August 18:45 - 19:45
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- Watch online
- Captioned
Featuring an undead lover, a dying brother, and a ghost: Lorrie Moore’s I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home is a novel that bristles with life while waltzing with death. Celebrated widely for her dazzling short stories, no one writes quite like...
Wednesday 21 August 20:30 - 21:30
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- Watch online
- Captioned
A celebrated London professor falls from grace in Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel, Caledonian Road. Immersive and Dickensian in ambition, it’s a brilliant state-of-the-nation novel about privilege and what’s really going on behind high society’s...
Thursday 22 August 13:30 - 14:30
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- Watch online
- Captioned
While researching her more than 30 bestselling novels on Tudor history, Philippa Gregory learned that it was only when women did something properly outrageous or above her station that they made it into the history books. So, she sought to change it:...
Thursday 22 August 18:45 - 19:45
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- Watch online
- BSL interpreted
When you think of Jenni Fagan, so much comes to mind: bestselling novelist, acclaimed poet, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is also a survivor of the care system. In this exclusive event, Fagan joins Caroline Sanderson to talk about how...
Thursday 22 August 21:00 - 22:30
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- Captioned
Erotica! No longer is it something talked about in hushed tones or read secretly as a guilty pleasure – we’re ridding ourselves of the taboo. Tonight, we celebrate writing about romance and sex, bringing together poets, authors, and actors to...
Friday 23 August 18:15 - 19:15
Friday 23 August 18:45 - 19:45
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- Watch online
- Captioned
When former Edinburgh Police Detective Ray Lennox seeks a new, fresh start in Brighton, it isn’t long before he’s dragged back to the murky world he’s desperate to forget. Resolution is the latest in Irvine Welsh’s Crime series and is as...