The 2024 Portobello Book Festival was a great success and
we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

Over the weekend, Portobello Book Festival attracted over 2000 people to the library, Portobello Swim Centre and The Portobello Bookshop, and we have had some lovely feedback both from those taking part and those attending. Our intention is always to try as far as possible to make sure that those who make up the community of Portobello see themselves, their experiences and their interests reflected in the programme. The programme is also designed to bring together a distinctive mix of subjects, writers, commentators and readers.

The organising team would like to thank:

All our participating writers for inspiring and entertaining us.

Our fantastic chairs for keeping everything running smoothly.

Our sound team Jock and Calum for making sure that everyone could be heard.

The ‘chair gang’ who helped moved 100 chairs from Portobello Town Hall to the library on Friday and back again on Monday. Also thanks to those who helped move chairs after events.

The Portobello Bookshop for hosting a great event on Friday evening. Also for providing a pop-up bookshop run by their cheerful staff over the weekend and making sure all our authors’ books were available for sale after each event.

A big thank you to Paul Hudson and the staff of Portobello Library, a fantastic resource on our doorstep. We really take over the library over the weekend including their staff room! The collaboration with the library and the help and time given by the library staff are what makes the festival the success it is.

And of course, thanks to our engaged and enthusiastic audiences who came along to the events and created such a vibrant atmosphere.

We start to plan our October festival well in advance so if you’re interested in being considered for inclusion, contacting us in the first half of January is a good idea. There are always limited spots and after our early planning sessions most of these are already accounted for. We’re volunteers so can’t always keep track of requests carrying over year on year, so getting in touch in early January makes it easier for us to consider you.

The 2025 programme will be launched early September
with tickets available shortly afterwards.

We have had a fantastic weekend and hope you enjoyed any events that you came to. Do let us know what you thought of the festival. Here are a selection of photos from the weekend which we may add to over the next few days.

On Your Bike – Sunday 4pm

Unfortunately Alan Brown is no longer able to take part in this event. However, it will still go ahead with Colin Salter discussing his book Remarkable Bicycle Rides with Jude Nixon. There are a few tickets left for the event that you can pick up from the library, which is open from 10-5 today, Friday and Saturday. If you can’t manage to the library before Sunday, just come along on the day. There’s a good chance you will get in.