The Edinburgh International Book Festival – small changes this year
The Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) 2025 will be held at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on Lauriston Place where the festival has now made its home.
Jenny Niven Director and CEO said they are comfortable in the still relatively new space but are making a couple of changes to improve the event even more.
The entrance will this year be placed on the corner of the site nearest to Middle Meadow Walk rather than opposite the back door. This will allow full use of the space at the back of the Institute where there will be tents and more catering outlets along with the Spiegeltent where all sorts of magical events take place.
A new box office will be positioned outside the site on Middle Meadow Walk to open the festival up even more to everyone. The site is free to access but tickets will be needed for most events – with a range of offers including some £5 tickets.
A great deal of the programme is as usual wide and varied and designed to stimulate conversation in the tents and the gardens. But there are a few new elements. There is a new strand for Young Adults (meaning 30 and under) with romantasy, sci-fi, horror, health, food and wellness all given room in the programme.
There will be a new Kids Zone on Lauriston Place in a safe hub between two of the former hospital wards and there will be more than 100 events for children – with a retrospective featuring author Jacqueline Wilson who gave her name to the girls magazine Jackie all those years ago. Cressida Cowell of How to Train Your Dragon fame is sure to be a popular event.
In the Spiegeltent there will be a wide variety of poetry, spoken word and music events all performed live.
The popular Table Talk series which began last year will return with more chefs and food writers to the fore – but also events involving eating – a supper with Rosie Kellett, Have Lunch with Spaniard José Pizarro, Brazilian cuisine with Ixta Belfrage and Palestinian food writer Sami Tamimi. And if none of that grabs you, there will be a fermenting workshop…
Paul French will be in Edinburgh to talk about his book on Wallis Simpson who had an 'amazingly riotous' couple of years in China in the 1920s.
The programme will be online here for you to peruse before tickets go on sale- and copies will be available at many outlets in the city from 10 June. We will bring you more details when we get our hands on an actual copy rather than the pdf.
© 2024 Martin McAdam
Repair
The theme this year is Repair with a list of international writers and performers that we have come to expect at the book festival with 700 events from 9 to 24 August. This idea will encourage audiences to explore the many things in the world which feel broken and how they might be fixed. There will be a wide range of active opportunities to rebalance and 'restore a sense of calm in the face of a world in chaos' through listening to talks and being encouraged to read the works of some of the many authors.
Jenny Niven said: 'At a time when important conversations can feel impossible to have without igniting conflict and anger, we want the Edinburgh International Book Festival to provide a safe place for challenging but considered discussions. This year our programme features over 600 writers and artists from 35 countries who have a wide range of perspectives on topics of personal, social and global importance. We invite you to come and learn something new, feed your curiosity and to broaden your horizons.'
She continued: 'We're hoping that we can present new writers and thinkers who are offering solutions and new ideas and great analysis that moves the conversation forward. And Repair is a very expansive idea. It's really fun when you talk to creative people about this idea, because everybody comes at it from all these different angles. So we're repairing in lots of ways.
'We're starting off with our Repair Gala, which is on Saturday the 10th, our opening day, and we've commissioned five different writers to think about the idea of Repair from whatever perspective they want. It's an amazing lineup, and as you can see, we're going for the really international sweep.'
The organisers hope to provide a memorable and engaging experience for everyone and the focus will be on making the festival accessible, inclusive, and relevant to a diverse audience.
The festival claims that literacy is decreasing in the UK and the Communities programme will stream more than 100 events to libraries in 12 Scottish local authority areas this year as one way of expanding the festival's reach.
Big Names
Irvine Welsh, Val McDermid, Nicola Sturgeon, Diane Abbott, Maggie O'Farrell, R F Kuang, Asako Yuzuki, Ash Sarkar, actor Brian Cox, Ruth Jones, Adam Buxton, Viggo Mortensen and Vanessa Redgrave are all in the programme.
Joe Boyd credited with producing Dylan and who 'electrified' him at the Newport Folk Festival will tell some tales of the people he has worked with.
Local names
Music from Edinburgh's own Hamish Hawk will reinterpret the work of Ivor Cutler.
Devi Sridhar from the University of Edinburgh who became such a well-known voice during the pandemic will talk about Health for All and explain the key to a longer, healthier life based on her book How Not To Die (Too Soon).
Rock the Boat is the monthly stand up night from Push the Boat Out Festival and Loud Poets, the nationwide programme bringing together younger poets competing in poetry slams are also listed.
Credit Thomas Heatherwick
The Front List and tickets
The Festival Front List has been on sale for some time with all events taking place at the nearby McEwan Hall in a collaboration with Underbelly. Tickets for those events have sold well and now the main events will go on sale to members of the public on 21 June.
If you become a Friend of the Festival then there are advance booking privileges and a Festival coffee gathering as well as a Christmas event. Details here.
There are specially priced tickets for the Under 30s and other events priced at £5 for those on low-income benefits.
FUNDING
The question of funding the book festival still looms large even a year after the EIBF ended their 20 year partnership with Bailie Gifford which funded much of the programme and particularly the schools events.
In 2024 Ms Niven said that the goal of the board and management was to deliver an event which was safe and successful for audiences, authors and staff. Some authors had threatened to withdraw if the relationship with the Edinburgh based investment fund did not end. Despite the fact that Bailie Gifford explained their investment in large companies such as Amazon, NVIDIA and Meta, fossil fuels or The Occupied Palestinian Territories had been misrepresented.
Nick Thomas, partner, Baillie Gifford, said in May 2024: 'Our collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, spanning decades, was rooted in our shared interest in making Edinburgh a thriving and culturally vibrant place to live and work. In recent years we have been proud to support the Schools' and Children's programmes, providing free books and creating opportunities for young readers to meet authors.
'The activists' anonymous campaign of coercion and misinformation has put intolerable pressure on authors and the festival community. We step back with the hope that the festival will thrive this year and into the future. We hold the activists squarely responsible for the inhibiting effect their action will have on funding for the arts in this country.
This year the festival is dependent on many different sources including the sponsorship from the People's Postcode Lottery which has an HQ in Charlotte Square.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on 21 June.
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk
© 2024 Martin McAdam
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