Saturday night in the Spiegeltent…
The wine was poured and all seats taken. It was finally about to happen: one of the events in this year’s programme that the staff were especially excited about. The Moth. Live storytelling. All the way from New York. European premiere. That’s the basic information, but if you haven’t heard of The Moth then a quick Google search will provide you with no less than 2,690,000 hits (although admittedly, some of them may refer to the insect).
Novelist George Dawes Green, who recently published his thriller Ravens, founded this cult gathering back in 1997. The idea is simple and all of us will have done it in one way or another: a cosy night with friends, sitting around a fire for example (or in George’s case, perching on a porch in the deep south of Georgia) telling each other (more or less) spellbinding stories.
Having relocated to New York, George missed these moments. So he decided to organise regular storytelling get-togethers which soon became so popular that George was forced to move them from his living room to a much larger venue. Since then, hundreds of storytellers – ranging from Moby and Ethan Hawke to Richard Price (one of the genius heads behind The Wire, due to appear in Charlotte Square this Friday night) – have shared their stories. There are only two rules: the stories must be no longer than ten minutes and must be true(ish).
Opening storyteller Jessi Klein recalled a trip to Disney World, when she nearly ended up bedding a person (man or woman?) dressed as a chipmunk at her sister’s wedding. Very much like stand-up comedy, it seemed a good warm up for George’s own story from his early adulthood spent in the Deep South. Next up the audience laughed at Jeff Solomon’s hilarious story of his Bar Mitzvah, complicated by his rowing divorced parents being forced into the same room.
Last, but for me the stand out performer of the night, was Edgar Oliver with a story from his remarkable childhood which constantly ranged from highly comic to deeply tragic. Sitting close to the stage I could see the genuine emotion in his face. He had perhaps the most amazing voice I have ever heard, deep yet gentle with exaggerated prolonged vowel sounds, and I was truly mesmerized by his performance. You can imagine how disappointed I was to discover the next day that his play at The Traverse had already finished its run. If you missed The Moth there is however some consolation. You can subscribe to their podcast at www.themoth.org/podcast. Happy listening!
Monday, 24 August 2009
A child's garden of verses
Today marks the halfway point of the Festival. More importantly for me, it's the first day of the RBS Schools Programme.
Coach load by coach load, Charlotte Square fills up with the most boisterous, excited young people. It's a wonderful part of what we do, and their youthful enthusiasm is infectious - just the shot in the arm we all need as we hit the halfway mark.
Plus, to be completely saccharine, it warms my heart to think of all the happy school kids, many of whom wouldn't be able to meet talented writers without our subsidised tickets and transport fund.
Today over 2,000 school children from Inverness, Lochgilphead, Perth and beyond descended upon the gardens in the highest of spirits. Even the too-cool-for-school teenagers (ties askew, skirts hiked up) managed to enjoy themselves. But then again, who wouldn't with the tempting fare on offer?
We opened with Edinburgh's own Maisie (the adorable kitten from Morningside) and her creator Aileen Paterson.Then we finished the day with a powerhouse duo: Melvin Burgess and Kevin Brooks. These two brilliant and talented writers certainly managed to keep the Secondary students on their toes.
A dozen other amazing authors (including one all the way from Australia!) rounded out a lovely day, which was fortuitously bursting with glorious sunshine. What's better than a school trip full of brilliant books and an ice cream picnic?
For the moment (as we breathe a collective sigh of relief that it all went smoothly) the garden is sans crested jumpers, blazers and knee socks. That is until our lollipop lady escorts tomorrow's visitors to the gate...
I think I'll seize the moment and find myself a wee glass of something to celebrate with.
Coach load by coach load, Charlotte Square fills up with the most boisterous, excited young people. It's a wonderful part of what we do, and their youthful enthusiasm is infectious - just the shot in the arm we all need as we hit the halfway mark.
Plus, to be completely saccharine, it warms my heart to think of all the happy school kids, many of whom wouldn't be able to meet talented writers without our subsidised tickets and transport fund.
Today over 2,000 school children from Inverness, Lochgilphead, Perth and beyond descended upon the gardens in the highest of spirits. Even the too-cool-for-school teenagers (ties askew, skirts hiked up) managed to enjoy themselves. But then again, who wouldn't with the tempting fare on offer?
We opened with Edinburgh's own Maisie (the adorable kitten from Morningside) and her creator Aileen Paterson.Then we finished the day with a powerhouse duo: Melvin Burgess and Kevin Brooks. These two brilliant and talented writers certainly managed to keep the Secondary students on their toes.
A dozen other amazing authors (including one all the way from Australia!) rounded out a lovely day, which was fortuitously bursting with glorious sunshine. What's better than a school trip full of brilliant books and an ice cream picnic?
For the moment (as we breathe a collective sigh of relief that it all went smoothly) the garden is sans crested jumpers, blazers and knee socks. That is until our lollipop lady escorts tomorrow's visitors to the gate...
I think I'll seize the moment and find myself a wee glass of something to celebrate with.
Skint? Fear not...
Pay day's a few days away and the dreaded current economic climate may have tightened your purse strings. Maybe, like me, you're just hopeless with money. Don't sweat! Charlotte Square's cheap thrills won't disappoint...
It's completely free to enter the garden!
Ten at Ten offers a fresh surprise every morning at 10am in the Writers' Retreat. Short story, poetry, flash fiction, suck it and see, for free.
Free reading matter! The Entrance Tent offers a wealth of thrills for the eyes and grey matter: the Times newspaper is available every day; there's the London Review of Books, and the UNESCO City of Literature stall heaving with information about the literary scene in Edinburgh.
Story Shop! Every day at 4pm a writer will appear as if by magic in The Bookshop and read you a story. You will sit on cushions and listen. You could find yourself enthralled, saddened, excited or titillated. You won't have to spend a penny. We lucked upon Gavin Inglis (above) yesterday - always entertaining company.
Treat yourself to a hearty soup from the Spiegeltent. £3.50 with an almighty doorstep of bread, it'll set you up for the day.
For £1.50, you can take a trip back to your childhood with a 99 from Di Rollo's ice cream bike. A constant fixture in the gardens, and an always welcome one.
Missed an event? Check out this year's media archive. They'll be adding to it as they go along. You can download the recordings for free and listen to them wherever you please.
Overhearing heated debates on the lawn: priceless (yet free).
Sleb author spotting: cheap thrills for your inner geek.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Press Office Snapshots
Some snapshot moments from the Press Pod in Charlotte Square in the first week:
Introducing A L Kennedy to wildlife photographer Simon King in the door of the Authors' Yurt which resulted not only in a conversation about dead rats, but in my bumping into Alison shortly afterwards clutching two copies of Simon's book and heading for the signing queue - thrilled to have talked to him about choughs and ravens. Who would have thought it?
Griff Rhys Jones sitting at my desk in the Press Pod answering my phone, thinking it was to do a live radio interview with BBC Radio Suffolk, only to find himself discussing a photocall with Malcolm McLaren which confused everybody concerned.
Sitting deep underground in the basement bar of the Rutland Hotel, transfixed by an interview filmed for the BBC Culture Show with Neil Gaiman and Denise Mina (watch out for it on BBC2 on Wednesday at 7.00pm). Not being a graphic novel afficionado, Gaiman is a new discovery for me - and listening to him speak for 30 mins, I am most certainly converted.
Introducing A L Kennedy to wildlife photographer Simon King in the door of the Authors' Yurt which resulted not only in a conversation about dead rats, but in my bumping into Alison shortly afterwards clutching two copies of Simon's book and heading for the signing queue - thrilled to have talked to him about choughs and ravens. Who would have thought it?
Griff Rhys Jones sitting at my desk in the Press Pod answering my phone, thinking it was to do a live radio interview with BBC Radio Suffolk, only to find himself discussing a photocall with Malcolm McLaren which confused everybody concerned.
Sitting deep underground in the basement bar of the Rutland Hotel, transfixed by an interview filmed for the BBC Culture Show with Neil Gaiman and Denise Mina (watch out for it on BBC2 on Wednesday at 7.00pm). Not being a graphic novel afficionado, Gaiman is a new discovery for me - and listening to him speak for 30 mins, I am most certainly converted.
Glasses very much half-full
We are now halfway through the 2009 Book Festival. Nine days have passed, and another nine days will elapse before the site empties and folds down onto itself like a tired, happy sigh.
But until then, we have all sorts of magic and mystery left to encounter.
Last night saw some fascinating jazz in the Spiegeltent, which tried - and very nearly succeeded - in making Portuguese a sing-along language. Aided and abetted by a tambourine, a triangle, and a drum with a hole in it, they strummed their way late into the night.
Inside the Author's Yurt, the whisky was flowing (indeed, several people commented on the heavy scent of liquor which hit you on entry). It became a place where cultures mixed: the delegation of newly arrived Swedish authors received an unusually gritty introduction to Edinburgh folk in the form of Irvine Welsh. The Yurt even looked the part: a roaring fire had transformed it from a respectable green-room into a fantastical Mongolian speakeasy.
The Yurt is not the only element of the Festival usually shielded from the public. The staff radios carry secret messages throughout the site, and they range from the banal to the ridiculous, often with very little middle ground. There are some tricky elements to radio manipulation: it is easy, for example, to forget just how many people can hear you. This particular blogger recently informed a good twenty or so people that she was on the loo, and just the other day a babe in arms grabbed someobody's microphone and coo'd angelically into the ears of the festival staff. Whether seeking lost handbags in the shape of dogs, or confirming that certain authors have indeed invited their two-hundred-strong audience to the pub after their event, there is always someone burbling away into a microphone.
There have been moments in the last week where you could have been forgiven for believing the site had turned into a dairy. Grahams Dairy have been giving out free milk at Storytime twice daily; there has been so much of the stuff around that visitors have consumed enough calcium to stave off osteoporosis for all eternity. As if that were not exciting enough, there have been bi-weekly ice-cream showdowns, when Graham's give away free samples of ice-cream mere metres from the Di Rollo stall...
So between Highland Park Whisky, oodles of milk, and August's obligatory buckets of rain, this year's Book Festival is turning out to have a distinctly liquid feel.
But until then, we have all sorts of magic and mystery left to encounter.
Last night saw some fascinating jazz in the Spiegeltent, which tried - and very nearly succeeded - in making Portuguese a sing-along language. Aided and abetted by a tambourine, a triangle, and a drum with a hole in it, they strummed their way late into the night.
Inside the Author's Yurt, the whisky was flowing (indeed, several people commented on the heavy scent of liquor which hit you on entry). It became a place where cultures mixed: the delegation of newly arrived Swedish authors received an unusually gritty introduction to Edinburgh folk in the form of Irvine Welsh. The Yurt even looked the part: a roaring fire had transformed it from a respectable green-room into a fantastical Mongolian speakeasy.
The Yurt is not the only element of the Festival usually shielded from the public. The staff radios carry secret messages throughout the site, and they range from the banal to the ridiculous, often with very little middle ground. There are some tricky elements to radio manipulation: it is easy, for example, to forget just how many people can hear you. This particular blogger recently informed a good twenty or so people that she was on the loo, and just the other day a babe in arms grabbed someobody's microphone and coo'd angelically into the ears of the festival staff. Whether seeking lost handbags in the shape of dogs, or confirming that certain authors have indeed invited their two-hundred-strong audience to the pub after their event, there is always someone burbling away into a microphone.
There have been moments in the last week where you could have been forgiven for believing the site had turned into a dairy. Grahams Dairy have been giving out free milk at Storytime twice daily; there has been so much of the stuff around that visitors have consumed enough calcium to stave off osteoporosis for all eternity. As if that were not exciting enough, there have been bi-weekly ice-cream showdowns, when Graham's give away free samples of ice-cream mere metres from the Di Rollo stall...
So between Highland Park Whisky, oodles of milk, and August's obligatory buckets of rain, this year's Book Festival is turning out to have a distinctly liquid feel.
Inside the Yurt by Carol Ann Duffy
Poet Laureate and long-time friend of the Book Festival, Carol Ann Duffy has written a wonderful poem in tribute to our outgoing director Catherine Lockerbie. She read Inside the Yurt – a humorous and occasionally emotional homage to the book festival – at Catherine’s leaving do on Sunday 16 August and again at her public event on the Monday. It has subsequently been printed in the Times newspaper for everyone to enjoy.
Duffy said that it was difficult to put into words Catherine’s contribution to “the most magnificent, most important and most generous book festival in the world.”
“Catherine has got total integrity. That’s what makes it so special. It’s a shining light for language.”
Inside the Yurt by Carol Ann Duffy (for Catherine Lockerbie)
Inside the yurt was a pond where goldfish swam
and the poets fished for haiku, undisturbed
by the piper playing an old lament outside.
Inside the yurt was a parliament, the politicians
took off their masks at the door and lay down
with the truth, a dram, from where they watched
London Town floating away like a dream.
Inside the yurt was an elephant, a hump-backed whale,
a swarm of bees, a Vice-President of the USA
who had come to say enough was enough. Inside
the yurt was a mosque at dusk, the sound of a wholly
human voice. A novelist whizzed round and round
in the yurt in her red Ferrari. A scientist checked
his notes on the next tsunami. A polemicist helped himself
to a large red wine and salami. Inside the yurt
was a loch where the National Monster swam
and another dram … and another dram … and another dram …
Inside the yurt was a magic pen which signed the name
of someone who wasn't there. Inside the yurt was the key
to a prison cell; a candle burned. Inside the yurt
was a wishing-well, a Gaelic spell, the Hogmanay bells,
a nine-year queue of children, women, men,
two million, then, all in the yurt in a singing ring
for Catherine, for Catherine, for Catherine,
who brought to the yurt the living, giving word
and the bells and the books and the candles. Thank her.
Inside the yurt was a pond where goldfish swam
and the poets fished for haiku, undisturbed
by the piper playing an old lament outside.
Inside the yurt was a parliament, the politicians
took off their masks at the door and lay down
with the truth, a dram, from where they watched
London Town floating away like a dream.
Inside the yurt was an elephant, a hump-backed whale,
a swarm of bees, a Vice-President of the USA
who had come to say enough was enough. Inside
the yurt was a mosque at dusk, the sound of a wholly
human voice. A novelist whizzed round and round
in the yurt in her red Ferrari. A scientist checked
his notes on the next tsunami. A polemicist helped himself
to a large red wine and salami. Inside the yurt
was a loch where the National Monster swam
and another dram … and another dram … and another dram …
Inside the yurt was a magic pen which signed the name
of someone who wasn't there. Inside the yurt was the key
to a prison cell; a candle burned. Inside the yurt
was a wishing-well, a Gaelic spell, the Hogmanay bells,
a nine-year queue of children, women, men,
two million, then, all in the yurt in a singing ring
for Catherine, for Catherine, for Catherine,
who brought to the yurt the living, giving word
and the bells and the books and the candles. Thank her.
Mankell & Wallander
There’s a touch of the inevitable with Henning Mankell’s appearances at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and yesterday’s was no exception as the Swedish author had to rush into his event in Charlotte Square Gardens after being trapped in a hotel elevator for over an hour. Once on stage, Mankell recalled his appearance in the literary city of Edinburgh a decade before, when he shared the stage with fellow crime fiction author Ian Rankin. Even then Mankell’s arrival was fraught with suspense and plot twists as he got lost walking through the New Town, just about making it to his own event. Inevitably, as if he was putting words to paper Mankell asked “what will happen next time?”
Unveiling some of the mysteries which surround the writer’s secret craft Mankell told the audience his infamous police inspector was named after… a scramble through a telephone directory. Shedding further light into the literary ways that have shot Wallander to fame Mankell revealed how a spot of bother – namely the inspector’s diabetes, diagnosed after the fourth book – have sweetened his popularity and generated worldwide sympathy.
The author could see how Edinburgh’s best loved detective, Rebus, and his own Wallander would have been friends and how their home towns – Edinburgh and Ystad – are infinitely brighter and more enlightened than the detectives’ dark minds. Numbers of tourists in Ystad are steadily going up and, pretty much like in Edinburgh, the first UNESCO City of Literature, fictional characters draw real people to the city.
Unveiling some of the mysteries which surround the writer’s secret craft Mankell told the audience his infamous police inspector was named after… a scramble through a telephone directory. Shedding further light into the literary ways that have shot Wallander to fame Mankell revealed how a spot of bother – namely the inspector’s diabetes, diagnosed after the fourth book – have sweetened his popularity and generated worldwide sympathy.
The author could see how Edinburgh’s best loved detective, Rebus, and his own Wallander would have been friends and how their home towns – Edinburgh and Ystad – are infinitely brighter and more enlightened than the detectives’ dark minds. Numbers of tourists in Ystad are steadily going up and, pretty much like in Edinburgh, the first UNESCO City of Literature, fictional characters draw real people to the city.
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