Tuesday 15 June 2010

Elsewhere...


So where, exactly, is "Elsewhere"? The many answers to that question are extremely fascinating and ridiculously entertaining, and we can prove it -- the Book Festival has this year commissioned fifty authors to write short stories or essays on the theme of Elsewhere. You'll be able to read them on our website -- the first is being uploaded on Thursday 17th June, and more will arrive throughout the rest of the year. To keep updated, follow us on Twitter and sign up to our ebulletin via our website home page.

Give the hugely diverse subject of Elsewhere to a talented author and you're bound to get something worth reading, but even we couldn't have predicted how imaginative -- and frankly insane -- some of these stories are. "Elsewhere" has been portrayed as everything from a holiday in Rome to a tetraplegic trapped in a hospital bed. Oh, and there's also a tale of your everyday alien abduction.

Serves us right. "Elsewhere" is such a fun theme to play with; what writer could resist?

Among those writers, by the way, are Michel Faber, Roddy Doyle, Alan Warner, Louise Welsh, James Robertson, Amy Bloom, and many more. We're itching to share these with you on the website.

And elsewhere, the 2010 Edinburgh International Book Festival itself is sitting expectantly on the horizon...