2009 Audio Events now available

We've just added 6 audio events from the first few days, with more to follow over the next couple of days. This year you can download the files to your mp3 player or computer to listen to when you want.

The first authors featured are Garrison Keillor, Cornelia Funke, Tom Kitchin, Emmanuel Jal, Carol Ann Duffy and Kate Atkinson.

Web stats say Cornelia Funke is the most popular so far today!

A reminder we'll be adding podcasts soon so you can subscribe to our 2009 events on the iTunes Music Store by clicking that link.

Party time... Excellent!

Thursday night in the square saw not one but two parties (is there such a thing as too much bubbly?) - the launch of the Scotland on Sunday's Headshook (Hachette) in the afore-mentioned number 5, and EIBF founder Jenny Brown's knees up for agents and publishers in the Party Pavilion. Headshook is a handsome anthology of commissioned pieces challenging some of the nation's finest writers to envisage Scotland's future, featuring the scribblings of a veritable dream team, including William McIlvanney, Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray and Kathleen Jamie, to name but 4 of 24. In his speech, Scotland on Sunday's deputy editor Kenny Farquharson told the tale of two scrawny 18 year olds rocking up to McIlvanney's house to borrow £50 to start a literary magazine. They were himself and Ali Smith, and, McIlvanney mused aloud, they still owe him the money...

Skipping over the road to give wonderful press officer Claudia some chat, I stuck my brass neck into the publishers' party. It was in full swing and bustling with many industry types shooting the breeze and eating smoked salmon. It was press pod fodder of lentils and stolen crisps for me thereafter (I think they were The Property of General Frances Sutton, press manager extraordinaire. I better watch my back...), as Claudia filled me in on all the day's details while waiting for the Culture Show crew to wrap for the evening. There was also time for the taking of a loving linger round the book shop. Too many wants, not enough funds, one can but dream of bending one's plastic till the heart's content and one's bank balance isnae...

Michael Russell's Selected Works and Other Stories

On a night fit for Heathcliff and Cathy, a troupe of us decamped from the Scottish Poetry Library in the Canongate for Minister for Culture Michael Russell's Selected Works in the Studio Theatre. Hardly a hardship, as jobs go! We got there nice and early and pitched a spot outside the LRB signing tent, where we had tea and cake (not like us at all!) and watched the people watch the pigeons watch the crumbs go by. It was nice to see so much jollity despite the weather: the book selling team were having a high old time; Sean, erstwhile of the EIBF security boys, is about to leave these wind swept climes to teach English in Azerbaijan (good luck, Sean!) and Neil Gaiman's signing queue really did go on for ages.

Selected Works is like Desert Island Discs, except the audience hears about poems, not music, and SPL director Robyn Marsack replaces Kirsty Young. Michael Russell admitted that he often uses bits of poems in his speeches, and that it was really important in his life. Music to SPL ears! His selection began with Tennyson, ended with Alastair Reid and took in Neruda, Eliot, Akhmatova and very much alive poet Jim Carruth, who agreed to read his poem aloud after a pre-event glass of wine with the Minister. We also learned the circumstances of Sorley MacLean's Collected Works being published by Carcanet: he told Robyn to come round and pick up the manuscript. She obliged, only to find him collecting the poems, quite literally, from various parts of the room, floor, desk... There are some he never did find.

Afterwards, it was over to the Spiegeltent, jooking fat rain drops (the indefatigable Claudine Quinn of the Children's Activity Corner lent her eye to the above photo), where a busy house were being entertained by Phillip Contini's Neapolitan love songs (here's the full playlist of the Spiegeltent players, if you'd like to plan ahead), then a little half pint and a little dander home. If only Kate Bush had appeared singing about wild and windy moors, a great night would've been a perfect one...

It's buzzing

It's positively buzzing here in Charlotte Square Gardens. Photographer Chris Close has been taking pictures of authors every day - whoever is here and willing - and hangs them in the Gardens for all to see. It's already shaping up to be a wonderful exhibition of literary faces in all their detail and day by day the number on display grows (see photos). We already have two of the maddest book signings under our belt: Darren Shan's lasted so long we had to move him and his hundreds of young fans (mainly boys) to different venues three times so as not to have a clash of signings in our signing tent and Neil Gaiman's stretched our queue managing skills to the limit! And we still have plenty of challenges coming up it being still the first week of the festival.

Selling books to John Calder

To our left is the vision that sends shivers down the spine of Ian Rankin. As he stood to welcome us all to 5 Charlotte Square, former home of 4th Marquess of Bute John Crichton-Stuart and neighbouring building of Alex Salmond's Bute House at number 6, (you should see the ceiling) for the launch event and party of Crimespotting: An Edinburgh Crime Collection, (Birlinn) thrown by Edinburgh Napier University, he revealed that this is the map on his dentist's ceiling.

This collection contains specially commissioned crime stories inspired by the city of Edinburgh ('a city the size of a town that feels like a village' said Rankin), and 'right and proper it is too, given that Scotland is becoming the IBM, Microsoft and Apple' of the crime writing world. In a swirl of canapes involving mini chicken, coriander naan and homemade strawberry and cream shortcake, I learned that when Rankin chaired Swedish crime maestro Henning Mankell at the EIBF many moons ago, only 12 people were in attendance. I also had the honour of selling a book to the legendary publisher John Calder while filling in for Birlinn's Kenny at the book stall.

Speaking of people called Ian, at Iain Banks' event immediately preceding this party, he was asked what it feels like to be a writer who straddles sci fi and fiction and he replied with this useful summary: sometimes you make a table, sometimes a chair, sometimes even a 'tair' or a 'chable'. But you are, after all is said and done, still a furniture maker. He also told a packed out Main Theatre about his upcoming title Transitions, spoke about his writing process and why you shouldn't write an entire novel under the influence of fine malt whisky.

In other news, Carol Ann Duffy obliged in signing an onion for bookseller James' daughter. If you haven't read her poem 'Valentine', you will be out of the loop here, but that gives you a lovely excuse to read it.

Now you can post on Flickr

We've just added a Flickr gallery for the Book Festival, if you are around Charlotte Square gardens with your digital camera or mobile phone this August, submit your favourite images (using Add to set in Flickr) and we'll add them in. The address you will need is http://www.flickr.com/groups/edbookfest/ To get things started I took a couple of images in the author's yurt this morning, since most visitors to the Book Festival don't get inside...

Hissing cockroaches & rubber faces

Yesterday was great fun! With 18,000 visitors to the gardens we were kept busy all day. A number of events proved particularly memorable: children in the Exotic Creatures with Sharon Tregenza event were thrilled to be able to handle a four foot python, a Mexican red-kneed tarantula, hissing cockroaches and a giant millipede, courtesy of Edinburgh Butterfly & Insect World. Posh Josh - a brand new Beano character - was created by the excited audience of The Beano event. Look out for the cheeky chappy in October as he makes his debut in the Minnie the Minx comic strip.


Despite hearing Emmanuel Jal’s tragic story of his brutal childhood as a Sudanese child soldier, his audience left uplifted after dancing in the aisles to an impromptu performance of his peace-promoting hip hop. As Peg mentioned earlier Garrison Keillor proved yet again that he is the consummate raconteur, keeping his audience amused with both tales of bizarre small-town American characters and his not inconsiderable rubber face! (See below.)


Today saw my wee baby nephew wreak havoc in his Rhymetime event. Getting up on stage to perform when not invited and pulling the hair of other babies’ mums is just not on - that’s the last time he’ll be allowed into an event. So much to look forward to for the rest of us though!