Saturday 7th October, 3.45-5.15pm, Portobello Baptist Church Hall

Three local authors explore past, present and possible future through the eyes of their characters. Caroline Dunford, Euphemia Martins Mysteries, R L McKinney, The Angel in the Stone, and Lesley Kelly, The Health of Strangers, discuss how social and political events affect their characters’ lives, relationships and identities.

Chair: Anne Gilchrist

Tickets for all Portobello Book Festival events are free and can be picked up from Portobello Library in Rosefield Avenue.

Saturday 7th October, 3.30-4.45pm, Library Upstairs

This anthology of work draws on the oral history tradition of minority ethnic communities to ‘shine a light’ on childhood. In a panel discussion, contributors to the book share their experiences of growing up in their country of origin whether overseas or here in Scotland.

Chair: Suzanne Munday of the Minority Ethnic Carers of People Project

Tickets for all Portobello Book Festival events are free and can be picked up from Portobello Library in Rosefield Avenue.

Saturday 7th October, 2-3.15pm, Library Upstairs

Discover the world of female Scottish writers and bloggers. Debut novelists Stella Hervey Birrell, How Many Wrongs Make a Mr Right, and Natalie Fergie, The Sewing Machine, have a blether with Joanne Baird, of Portobello Book Blog, about debut novels, writing that tricky second novel, the highs and lows of blogging and everything in-between.

Tickets for all Portobello Book Festival events are free and can be picked up from Portobello Library in Rosefield Avenue.

Saturday 7th October, 12.45-2.15pm, Portobello Baptist Church Hall

Kaite Welsh is the author of The Wages of Sin, a mystery set in 1890s Edinburgh, which features a female medical student turned detective.  Jane Tulloch’s novels Our Best Attention and Assured Attention are set in Murrays, a large fictional department store in 1970s Edinburgh. Join them as they discuss researching and writing historical fiction set in very different eras.

Chair: Viv Cree

Tickets for all Portobello Book Festival events are free and can be picked up from Portobello Library in Rosefield Avenue.

Saturday 7th October, 12.15-1.45pm, Library Upstairs

This session hears from three authors who have been employed as writers-in-residence about their experience and how it has influenced their own writing. Doug Johnstone was until recently writer-in-residence to William Purves Funeral Directors, Thomas Clark is currently undertaking a residency with Selkirk Football Club and Janice Galloway was the first Scottish Arts Council writer-in-residence to four Scottish prisons.

Chair: Catherine Simpson, recently Writer in Residence at Dunbar’s CoastWord Festival

Saturday 7th October, 11.30am-12noon, Library

BOOKBUG returns to the Book Festival for fun, songs and rhymes.

No tickets needed for this event, just turn up with your wee ones.

Saturday 7th October, 11am-12.30pm, Portobello Baptist Church Hall

Join Fraser Parkinson and Jack Gillon for a unique journey: a photographic tour from Edinburgh to Portobello via Leith. Jack and Fraser talk you through the highways and by-ways, as well as the many lost sights, people and buildings on the way to the sea. Audience members are encouraged to contribute their own memories and comments about the photographs as they progress along the route.

Chair: Bill Jameson

Tickets for all Portobello Book Festival events are free and can be picked up from Portobello Library in Rosefield Avenue.

Saturday 7th October, 11am-12noon, Library Upstairs

Daniel Gray is the author of Saturday, 3pm, a collection of 50 short essays about football. They aim to remind readers that despite footballers’ astronomical salaries, mad ticket prices, lunchtime kick-offs and the clamour for TV rights, football can still be a joy. Saturday, 3pm is a book of love letters to football which help you find the romance in the game all over again. The author also has a new book available now, Scribbles in the Margins, which is about the delights of reading.

Chair: Graham Boyack

Tickets for all Portobello Book Festival events are free and can be picked up from Portobello Library in Rosefield Avenue.

Saturday 7th October, 10.30am-12.30pm, Portobello Baptist Church Cafe

Following the success of last year’s workshop, we take inspiration from what’s around us to kick start and develop our creative writing. First time and seasoned writers all welcome. The workshop is led by two local writers, M Louise Kelly and Sheila M Averbuch. 

Tickets for all Portobello Book Festival events are free and can be picked up from Portobello Library in Rosefield Avenue.