Edinburgh book festival director hits back at critics

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

Ms Niven said she wanted the festival, which has a theme of 'repair' this month, to focus on having 'productive' and 'nuanced' conversations rather than stage 'polarised' debates.
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In an interview with The Herald, she said she stood by her decision to invite Nicola Sturgeon to promote her new memoir.
She insisted the sold-out event would be a 'robust discussion' as the former First Minister will be interviewed by broadcaster Kirsty Wark.
Ms Niven, who is overseeing her second festival, said she did not want to have a programme of 'dangerous ideas,' as other festivals have promoted themselves in the past.
Jenny Niven is overseeing her second edition of the Edinburgh International Book Festival since being appointed director. (Image: Edinburgh International Book Festival)
The festival director, who has been accused of shunning events tackling the ongoing debates on gender and women's rights in Scotland, stressed the importance of programming 'joyful' events which were 'a bit of respite from everything that is going on.'
Ms Niven, who said the festival had been 'galvanised' by the level of support it had seen from writers and publishers, said advance ticket sales for this year's programme had been up on this time last year and were better than expected.
Many of the largest-capacity talks, which will take place in the McEwan Hall, are completely sold out, including Ms Sturgeon's event.
Ms Niven was appointed just over two years ago to take over from long-time festival director Nick Barley.
The run-up to her first festival last summer was dominated by prolonged controversy over its headline sponsor Baillie Gifford and its links with the fossil fuels industry, with a number of Scottish authors backing a campaign threatening to disrupt and boycott the 2024 event.
The festival eventually agreed to part company with the Edinburgh-based investment firm, to the dismay of other leading Scottish writers.
Ms Niven has been criticised this year over a lack of feminist and gender critical writers in the line-up. Jenny Lindsay and Darren McGarvey are among the authors who have suggested they have been deliberately excluded from the festival, which has been running since 1983 and is Scotland's biggest celebration of literature.
There has also been controversy over the decision to give Ms Sturgeon a platform at the festival, which recently appointed her former chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, to its board.
The festival, which will feature more than 640 writers this month, recently secured a £300,000 lifeline from the Scottish Government to plug a budget created by the dropping of Baillie Gifford. The event's government funding has more than doubled over the last 12 months to a record £820,000.
Speaking at the launch of [[Edinburgh]]'s summer festivals season last week, First Minister John Swinney stressed the importance of freedom of expression and pledged he would 'protect freedom of speech' while he was in office.
Mr Swinney, who was speaking days after Jewish performers claimed that venues had cancelled their Fringe shows on safety grounds, praised the 'glorious diversity' of Scotland and said it was a country of 'robust debate and inquiry.'
However a subsequent appearance by Mr Swinney at the Fringe was constantly interrupted by pro-Palestine campaigners.
Ms Niven admitted that planning for the book festival was treading 'a very challenging line' on a number of issues.
She told The Herald: 'It is a lively, noisy political environment on so many different topics at the moment.
'One of our core intentions is to make the festival relevant, part of people's conversations and part of people's lives.
'I think we are going to hit a few nerves here and there. It is not that surprising that there has been a lot of commentary about the festival.
'If you look at most of the issues that we are being picked up on, there are people are arguing on every side on every point.
"With a festival of 700 unique events, we very rarely run anything more than once. We have an enormous variety, diversity and range of different topics being tackled. People are going to have strong opinions."
Ms Niven, a former head of literature at the Scottish Government arts agency Creative Scotland, has previously worked on festivals and events in Melbourne and Beijing, was a founder and director of the Edinburgh poetry and spoken word festival Push The Boat Out, and led the programming of special events to mark the centenary of the birth of the Edinburgh-born author Muriel Spark.
She said: 'I don't think I've ever run a festival programme where somebody has not complained that they should have been in there.
'We are pitched literary thousands of books every year. We cannot cover every single subject. We wouldn't intend to. We also miss things.
'With subjects that are particularly challenging or divisive, I think we need to make sure we're exploring them from the perspective of books that allow you to have a good, robust conversation that is not about the personal, but is about the bigger picture issue. We don't always have those books in front of us.
'This year we're doing a huge amount of stuff on geopolitics, we have a lot of challenging stuff around Israel-[[Palestine]] and we have a brilliant programme looking at politics in America.
'I don't think it's possible to tackle every topic with the care and diligence that it requires.
'I think we have to make sure the conversations that we do have help to move the conversation forward, bring something new to the table or frame the conversation in a way so that people are listening and learning. That is difficult to do. That doesn't mean we are going to shy away from difficult topics.
'They are really important, but they're not the full picture of what we do. We have so much amazing fiction, poetry, music and song in the programme. A lot of the book festival is about joy, imagination and offering a bit of respite from everything that is going on.
'It's really important to look at all the joyful, interesting and more frivolous stuff that we're doing, because that is more representative of the publishing industry and the arts at the moment.'
Mr Sturgeon, who has made regularly appearances at the book festival in recent years, will be launching her eagerly-awaited memoir, Frankly, on August 14.
Asked about the criticism of the former First Minister's appearance in the programme, Ms Niven said: 'In what world would the country's largest leading book festival not publish a memoir by the former First Minister Scotland. I would absolutely stand by programming Nicola Sturgeon.
'It is worth saying we are really pleased that Kirsty Wark is doing the interview. It will be quite a journalistic interview. I wouldn't expect her to shy away from difficult questions. I think it will be a robust discussion.'
Ms Niven suggested that the festival wanted to offer an alternative to media reporting on divisive issues, which she said tended to focus on the 'extreme end' of a debate.
She added: 'A lot of the time, what we are trying to do, which I think is in line with what a lot of the public and readers want to see, is have a more nuanced conversation where we share some ground, rather than the very divisive end of whichever issue it is.
'What is the conversation, what is the commonality, what is the common ground that we can agree on? We might challenge ourselves. We might learn something new.
'There was a bit of a fashion around 10 years ago or so for festivals of 'dangerous ideas.' I think we've moved on from that.
'I don't think that's the most productive way to have conversations at the moment in the landscape that we are all in. It doesn't always have to be so polarised.'
Ms Niven admitted the run-up to this year's festival had been 'pretty challenging.'
However she added: 'I think this year's programme is great. People who are participating in the festival this year are bringing everything to it, as they always do. That kind of motivates you.
'Our ticket sales are good. We are in slightly better shape at this point than we had predicted.
"People are still booking for events a lot later than they used to in the past.
"But in terms of ticketing income and numbers of tickets sold, we are up on where we were at this time last year, which is really great to see.
'We have been inundated with pitches from publishers and writers who want to be at the festival. It is still one of the biggest events of its kind in the world.
'We are privileged to have that support from writers and publishers. It feels very galvanising. So many people are invested in making this thing a huge success.'