2020

A Sense of Place and Imagination with Janis Mackay @JanisMackay

Joanne 2020, Authors, Home

Saturday 3rd October – 12noon – online

Janis Mackay is an author, storyteller and creative writing tutor, living in her native Portobello. Janis had her first novel for children published by winning the Kelpies prize in 2009. Since then she has had nine novels published, and won the Scottish Children’s Book Awards in 2013 for her novel for children – The Accidental Time Traveller. As a storyteller Janis is often inspired by folk and fairy lore, drawing on themes and imagery in myth to create new stories. Janis has just brought out her first novel for adults, The Watchmaker’s Wife, which is based on the life of her grandmother. Often finding inspiration at intersections, with this novel she merges family story with fiction. Janis is currently doing a PhD, fusing life story, landscape and mythology. She teaches creative writing at Edinburgh University, and spends a lot of time gazing out the window to the sea!

Books by all our participating authors are available to order from The Portobello Bookshop.
Click here to visit the PBF page

The Secret Life of Books with Professor Tom Mole @ProfTomMole

Joanne 2020, Authors, Home

Saturday 3rd October – 11am – online

Join Tom Mole in conversation with Paul Hudson of Portobello Library as they discuss The Secret Life of Books.

We love books.  We take them to bed with us.  We display them on our bookshelves.  We write our names in them.  They weigh down our suitcases when we go on holiday.  We take them for granted.  But there’s much more to them than meets the eye.  From how books feel and smell, to burned books, banned books, and books that create nations, The Secret Life of Book is about everything beyond the words on the page.  It’s about how books – and readers – have evolved over time.  And it’s about how books still have the power to change our lives.

Tom Mole is Professor of English Literature and Book History at the University of Edinburgh, where he runs the Centre for the History of the Book.  He is the author of What the Victorians Made of Romanticism, which won the Saltire Prize for best research book in 2018.  He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives in Edinburgh with his wife and daughter.

Books by all our participating authors are available to order from The Portobello Bookshop.
Click here to visit the PBF page

Creative Writing Workshop with J L Hall @jlhallwriter

Joanne 2020, Home

Saturday 3rd October 2-4pm on Zoom Meetings

The workshop is now fully booked. If you would like to be added to the waiting list, please contact us as detailed below.


Join our creative writing workshop led by local writer J L Hall. In a year where we have all spent more time at home than away or abroad, this workshop will transport us to our favourite place for a couple of hours. Drawing on techniques from life-writing to fiction to poetry, this is an informal and practical session which is suitable for new or experienced writers.

Please come equipped with a memory of a favourite place – somewhere you can vividly and happily recall, somewhere you can conjure up easily as you write.

Please note that as this event will have limited space, priority will be given to writers who have NOT been working with J L Hall in the monthly Portobello Community Writers Workshop. 

To book your place, please email portobellobookfestival@gmail.com There are only TEN spaces available which we expect will fill up quickly so we will keep a waiting list if necessary, Please advise at the time of booking if you have any special requirements for the Zoom session such as large-print of handout sheets, or if you are hard of hearing, or may need to take breaks, etc

J L Hall is a Scottish writer of essays, life-writing, travel writing, short stories, and poetry. She is published across print, online, and podcasts, and has been winner and finalist in international and national writing awards. J L Hall lives in Edinburgh by the sea teaching, coaching, and editing creative writing.

To find out more about J L Hall, please visit: www.jlhallwriter.com and www.thewritinglab.co.uk

More Footprints in the Sand with Archie Foley

Joanne 2020, Authors, Home

Friday 2nd October – 7pm – online

Forty years of publication for a community newspaper deserves to be celebrated, the more so if that paper has always been produced entirely by local volunteers and financed solely by advertisements placed by local businesses. That is why Archie Foley and Peter E Ross decided to draw attention to this achievement by compiling another selection of articles from the history pages of the Portobello Reporter. The articles chosen span the years from 1980 to 2020 and record “Portobello’s history and reminiscences” thus fulfilling one of the key aims of the paper’s founders.

Archie Foley will take you on a tour of Portobello to see some of the places featured in the book. You will be seeing them as they are today but Archie will be able to show how they feature in the Portobello story and that Portobello is not just Edinburgh’s seaside suburb.

Books by all our participating authors are available to order from The Portobello Bookshop.
Click here to visit the PBF page

Watch the launch of the 2020 Portobello Book Festival Programme online

Joanne 2020, Home

Usually by now, we would have held the launch event for the Portobello Book Festival at the Dalriada and have handed out copies of the programme at the Village Show. Sadly, as we know, neither of these events have been able to take place this year.

But the 2020 Portobello Book Festival is still going ahead and today you can watch Mae Shaw talk about how we have adapted the book festival this very unusual year.


Keep an eye on the website tomorrow where full details of all events you can watch over the course of the weekend of 2nd to 4th October will be revealed.

All the events will be on line and to watch, all you need to do is come to the website during the weekend and click on the post to watch each event. All will be available to watch afterwards too so if you are busy, you don’t need to miss out!

Portobello Book Festival is going online for 2020!

Joanne 2020, Home

We are pleased to tell you that there WILL be a Portobello Book Festival this year!

Like many festival organisers, we have been considering whether we could hold our festival in any kind of physical way. With the uncertainty regarding Covid-19, we decided the safest way to be able to run the festival this year is online.

We are delighted that many of our contributors who had already agreed to take part are still willing to take part in a virtual format. We think we have a very exciting line-up with a great variety of authors and events.

We will let you know what’s on the programme and how you will be able to take part nearer the time. In the meantime, you can mark our usual dates of the first weekend in October in your diaries.

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