Record ticket sales on opening day

After much anticipation, our tickets went on sale on Friday 28 June and we have been thrilled with the response to our 2013 programme. Thousands of people booked by phone, on the website and at our Box Office counter at the Roxburghe Hotel in Edinburgh - in fact we sold more tickets this year on our opening day of sales than we have ever done - proving that literature has Wembley Stadium-sized rock-star status in the hearts and minds of anyone who loves a good read, doesn't mind dipping their toes into the unknown and enjoys being part of a great discussion - whether serious or not.

Competition for tickets was fierce: the first customers in the queue for the Box Office at the Roxburghe Hotel arrived at 3.10am and by the time we opened at 8.30am there were already 286 people waiting.

Our new strand of Reading Workshops across both the adult and children’s programmes has proved popular (although they aren’t all sold out yet so have a look at availability) as have talks featuring Caitlin Moran, Andrew Marr, Robert Peston, Kate Atkinson and Rupert Everett, which all sold out quickly. The Independence Debate with Kirsty Walk, the Celebration of Iain Banks and The Phoenix Comic Workshop in the Stripped programme also sold out.

There are literally hundreds of events which haven’t sold-out though – as you would expect with a programme of over 700 events and 800 authorsso plenty of tickets still available for all sorts of wonderful authors, poets, illustrators and graphic novelists.

Here’s a link which you can use to check what’s sold out:

http://online.edbookfest.co.uk/soldout/

This is an active link which updates automatically so you can use it from now until the end of the Book Festival.

A few tips for browsing online:

Have a look at the themes pages – they are a great guide to broad subject areas and give you a good idea of the shape of the overall programme.  

If you just want to know whether we have any events with a focus on a particular subject, for instance ‘Russia’, ‘birds’ or ‘classic novel’, simply type it into the keyword search box.

And use the drop-down category search menu for finding events on a whole variety of subjects such as music, health, science, education, politics, European Fiction, Free events, debates and so on.

And of course you can always just search for a particular author too by using the Author A-Z.

We hope you enjoy browsing the programme – if you prefer to flick through a paper version of the brochure we’d be happy to send one to you, simply email mailinglist@edbookfest.co.uk.

Or you can browse the digital edition of the brochure on screen instead.

We've launched the 2013 programme!

After months of hard work gathering together hundreds of authors from across the globe and crafting over 700 events, we are thrilled to unveil our 2013 Edinburgh International Book Festival programme. Hopefully some of you will have already have had the chance to look through the literary gems on offer - we hope you enjoy choosing what and who to see.

 

 

This year we celebrate our 30^th birthday, looking back over the past three decades to the year we started in 1983 and forwards thirty years to 2043.

 

Use our website search fields to browse events - you can search by author, subject or theme or by the age of your child if you are looking for children's events.

 

You can also view events by looking at the brochure: download a PDF file of the brochure.

 

Or if you'd like us to post you a copy, email your name and address to mailinglist@edbookfest.co.uk with the subject line 'brochure request'.

 

Our Director Nick Barley and Children's Programme Director Janet Smyth pose for the press at the launch of the Edinburgh International Book Festival's 2013 programme.

Transporting the big 30 from the Signet Library in Parliament Square,Edinburgh back to our office on the other side of town.

 

Down the Mound and past the Galleries...

Finally reaching Charlotte Square Gardens a bit puffed, a little bruised but generally intact.

Safely tucked into a corner of our office - waiting for August.

 

 

 

 

 

 



346 days to go

August 2012 watched two hundred thousand people fall in literary love with eight hundred authors.

Michael Morpurgo sang ‘Only Remembered’, unaccompanied. Jackie Kay stood up and by way of introduction said “I'm from Scotland and I'm a lesbian”. David Walliams made four hundred kids fire questions at him. Chris Riddell drew a monster in the middle of the Gardens. Val McDermid dressed up as a pirate. Jeremy Paxman admitted he can't dance. John McCarthy told us how to laugh when you're locked away without sunlight. Neil Gaiman rolled about on the walkway. Michael Palin did the Bolt pose. John Sampson made everyone sing. Ali Smith caused two journalists to throw away their pens and just listen.

That's about 1% of what caused a mass outbreak of glee and awe this month in Charlotte Square Gardens.

I'm loathe to say what I'm about to say, because it seems obvious to the point of being hackneyed. But I'm going to say it anyway, because it's the truth: my highlight of the 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival was the World Writers' Conference. The keynote speeches were astounding, and I've never known a Book Festival venue to be so alive. There were guffaws, swearing, hissing, cries of “hear hear!”, and a philosophical quandary the size of a small planet. Actually there were a few of those.

If you're one of the Writers' Conference delegates and you're reading this, please know that your mind is bloomin' delicious and I would like to eat it. (If that's okay with you.)

The Book Festival would not simply whip itself out from under us like a tablecloth and leave us shivering. It's left plenty of stuff for us to be getting on with. The memories, yes, and the books, and the autograph you got Jeanette Winterson to scribble on your left hip (admit it) – but there's also all this:

Video & audio recordings

Five video recordings of some of the biggest events from this year's Book Festival, along with a plethora of audio recordings, will become available – completely free of charge – in the Book Festival media gallery over the next few weeks. So if you weren't in Edinburgh this August, you won't miss out after all.

Writers' Conference

This was just the beginning. The biting intellectuality of the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference events will continue, starting with the Berlin International Literature Festival next week and then moving on to sixteen countries around the globe. Keep an eye on the Writers' Conference website for videos and updates. And continue the debates on Twitter with hashtag #worldwritersconf

Elsewhere

The Book Festival's very own book packed with brand new writing on the subject of “Elsewhere” will be available in shops soon. You can read the pieces (by a great range of writers, from Theresa Breslin to A L Kennedy) on the website; and listen to many of them being read out by the authors themselves.

The Anobii First Book Award

A celebration of debut novelists, the Anobii First Book Award gives us – the readers – forty six nominees to choose from. Which new book really awed you? Voting closes at 4.30pm on Friday the 12th of October 2012.

2013

The next Edinburgh International Book Festival programme will be announced in June 2013. Charlotte Square Gardens will open its gates once more to the book-loving public on Saturday the 10th of August 2013.

This is me signing off. If you've been reading – thank you! For tolerating my silliness and my strange punctuation, and for taking part in the social media side of the Book Festival, which has been just as triumphant as the grassy bits.

I'm tempted to finish on a stream of mushy adjectives. But instead I'll finish with a quote from John Calder (Writers' Conference founder, and supporter of the Book Festival long before it was even conceived). He stood up during the debate on the future of the novel and said this:

"Literature is art.

As long as there is life, there will be art". 

Day 18

A 9-year-old boy planning out his career as a novelist with help from a Book Festival author; a trio of girls squealing at writer Jacqueline Wilson as if she were Justin Beiber; a group of school kids sitting on the grass with their noses buried in freshly-bought books.

Those were just some of the scenes from this month in Charlotte Square Gardens. We have nothing to fear from the future of literature – the youngest generation of book fans will make sure no page goes unturned. Or indeed unwritten.

By the way, I'm not just venting randomly. Today was the Schools Gala day at the Book Festival, which meant a full day of events just for schoolkids. We had Julia Donaldson and Tom Pow, Theresa Breslin and Joan Lingard, many other talented and good-spirited contributors, and loads of bunting and balloons (which of course meant a number of helium-voices over the radios). All of it added a great party atmosphere to the sun-filled Gardens.

Oh, and there were about a zillion Where's Wallys.

Where's Wa- THERE HE IS.

I'll post one last time here on the blog tomorrow with m'final thoughts on this year's record-breaking Book Festival, but, for now, it's time to fold up the deckchairs, take down the tents, pull up the walkways, pack up the books, and sweep up all the sleeping authors.

Day 17

Okay so I didn't go to eight events at the Book Festival today. I went to nine. Oho that's right. I've spent hours (sleepily) boasting about it and have been reliably informed that it's a Book Festival record. Allow me to boast some more by telling you about my day.

10:00 Ten at Ten. These have been consistently good-quality little events every morning at the Book Festival, and they ended this year on a high. Samkela Stamper read from her poetry and diary with contagious gusto.

10:15 Deborah Levy & Gwendoline Riley. Two powerful authors with a captivating way with words. There's something exciting about an author reading from their own works, and this event was a perfect example of that. Author readings have been among my favourite moments this August.

11:30 Kathy Lette. Kathy began her event with a mini highland fling! And it only got better from there. Full of outrageous true stories (from keeping Julian Assange in her attic to kissing Prince Harry on the lips), Kathy fused moving insights into her character's (and son's) autism, with laugh-out-loud humour.

14:00 Tom Bullough & Jane Sullivan. It's inspiring when speakers can work a small venue to great effect. Tom gripped the audience with tales of the deaf protagonist in his latest novel, and Jane shared the thinking and history behind her remarkable book about little people.

15:30 Harriet Walter. “We never tell older people that they're beautiful”, said Harriet. “So I went up to her and told her”. Harriet earned the adoration of a large audience as she shared her photography project celebrating the beauty of the older woman.

17:00 Robert Macfarlane. This was a motivating event about walking through landscape, and thinking as you do so. Robert is possibly the most instinctively articulate author I've heard at the Book Festival this year; and that's really, really saying something.

18:30 James Meek. This novelist writes about love as few others can; meticulously and without restraint. In his event this evening he gave us an insight into how, and why.

20:00 John McCarthy. Famously, John McCarthy is the BBC journalist who spent five years as a captive in Lebanon. He spent that whole time without a glimpse of sunlight. Tonight he gave a personal, fascinating account of his experience. It wasn't a surprise that the event was moving – but it was a surprise that it was hilarious. An absolutely extraordinary hour. Furthermore, it was the inaugural Frederick Hood Memorial Lecture at the Book Festival, celebrating the life of the late Frederick Hood, a young Charlotte Square-based investment manager who had a profound impact on those around him. Tonight, Hood's father presented John McCarthy with a Frederick-inspired fedora hat as a thank you and a memento.

21:00 Unbound. The Book Festival's late-night series of events has been a joy and – as ever – a phenomenal success. Sending it out on a high for another year was comedian Sian Bevan and the talented winners of Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Lots of interaction, lots of brilliant readings, and LOTS of laughs.

The 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival has come to an end for another year. But let us not mourn! Let us look back and sigh with great – and happily smug – contentment. And, of course, let us look forward. The Book Festival is getting better every year – so imagine what 2013 is going to be like.

Incidentally, it's not really the end of the Book Festival for this year...

Tomorrow is School Gala Day; a whole day in Charlotte Square Gardens open only to schools. So I'll report back to you tomorrow, and then – maybe – we can start thinking about closure...