STRONG BEGINNINGS

1.30-2.30pm                                                                   LIBRARY UPSTAIRS

Caron McKinlay (The Storytellers) and Elissa Soave (Ginger and Me) speak about the joys and challenges of publishing their debut novels in 2022.

In The Storytellers three women trapped in the afterlife are forced to revisit their toxic pasts to answer the ultimate question What is love?

In Ginger and Me everything changes when Wendy meets Ginger in this part coming of age and part mystery thriller.

Chair: Paul Hudson

DANGER ZONES

3.00-4.00pm                                                                        LIBRARY UPSTAIRS

Author Mark Fleming discusses his new book 1976: Growing Up Bipolar, a disturbing but life-affirming memoir. From playing gigs and recording an album and BBC radio session during Edinburgh’s electrifying post-punk scene to severe depression and locked psych wards, he describes how music has soundtracked the highs and lows of his life. 

Chair: Bill Jameson

THE PUNK ROCK POLITICS OF JOE STRUMMER: RADICALISM, RESISTANCE AND REBELLION

4.15-5.15pm                                                                     LIBRARY UPSTAIRS

Gregor Gall, Visiting Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Leeds and the editor of Scottish Left Review, draws on Joe Strummer’s lyrics, bootleg recordings, interviews and testimony from over 100 followers, to take the reader on a journey through the political influences and motivations that defined one of the UK’s greatest punk icons and produced a lasting legacy of progressive politics.

Chair: Joe Herzberg, drummer and Clash fan

DR GAVIN FRANCIS AND PROFESSOR DEVI SRIDHAR

5.30-7.00pm                                                            LIBRARY DOWNSTAIRS

Edinburgh GP, Dr Gavin Francis’s 7th book Recovery, the Lost Art of Convalescence is not only a useful practical guide, but also an uplifting meditation on hope and healing. World-leading expert on global health, Professor Devi Sridhar’s book Preventable: How a Pandemic Changed the World and How to Stop the Next One, tells the extraordinary story of Covid-19 and how global politics shape our health.

Chair: Stewart Mercer, Professor of Primary Care and Multimorbidity, Edinburgh University

Tickets for all events are available from Portobello Library
Books available from The Portobello Bookshop

SLAVES AND HIGHLANDERS: SILENCED HISTORIES OF SCOTLAND AND THE CARIBBEAN

10.30-11.30am                                                               LIBRARY UPSTAIRS                                                 

David Alston’s book, which has been described as “necessary reading for our moment”, exposes and explores the prominent role of Highland Scots in the exploitation of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the cotton, sugar and coffee plantations of the 18th and 19th centuries.  This legacy, entwined with so many of our contemporary institutions, must be reckoned with.

Chair: Lisa Williams, Founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association and Honorary Fellow, University of Edinburgh

BOOK BUG

11.00-11.30am                                                         LIBRARY DOWNSTAIRS

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

TRUDY & ME

12.00-1.00pm                                                          LIBRARY DOWNSTAIRS

Bridget Campbell, author and illustrator, discusses her latest project Trudy & Me, a rhyming children’s picture book set in Portobello. Sharing the perspective of Patrick (4) big brother to Trudy (2) who has Down’s Syndrome, it is a joyful book about siblings and about accepting and celebrating difference. Lauren Eliott Lockhart, Patrick and Trudy’s mum, joins Bridget for the session which includes a reading of the book, a discussion of how it was produced, a chance to see original artwork as well as activities for children.

A MATTER OF TIME

12.00-1.00pm                                                                 LIBRARY UPSTAIRS

Very different eras of history feature in the novels of both Mary Paulson-Ellis (20^th century Portobello in Emily Noble’s Disgrace) and Sue Lawrence (16^th century Scotland in The Green Lady). Join them as they discuss their books, how they make their historical settings authentic and just why we find the past so fascinating.

Chair: Joanne Baird

Tickets for all events are available from Portobello Library
Books available from The Portobello Bookshop

WRITING WORKSHOP

10.30-12.00noon                                                           LIBRARY UPSTAIRS

Long Live Dada! Free Your Mind. Free Your Writing.

Learn about the ground-breaking techniques developed by artists from the DaDa movement and create your own writer’s manifesto. This fun and hands-on session is open to writers of all abilities and styles. The workshop is led by writer and award-winning visual artist, Sasha Saben Callaghan. Sasha’s illustrations have been published in a wide range of publications and featured in national and international exhibitions. All materials will be provided.

JOHN BRODIE’S PORTOBELLO…  PLUS A LITTLE BIT MORE

12.30-1.30pm                                                                  LIBRARY UPSTAIRS

John Brodie’s Portobello is the latest local history book by Archie Foley and Peter E Ross and is a comprehensive selection of colour images from the archive of John Brodie who in the 1950s and 60s was an amateur photographer living in Wakefield Avenue. Archie begins the session with an illustrated talk after which there will be time for questions and discussion with local historian Dr Margaret Munro and David McLean (Lost Edinburgh).

SPEAKING TO US FROM THE PAST

2.00-3.00pm                                                                         JAMESON GATE

Hugh Miller, stonemason, pioneer geologist and fossil-hunter, ground-breaking popular science writer, folklorist, crusading newspaper editor and man of faith, spent the last years of his life in Portobello. In this session Larissa Reid, freelance science writer, poet and member of The Friends of Hugh Miller and Elsa Panciroli, Highland palaeontologist and author of Beasts Before Us and The Earth, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, reflect on how he has influenced them.

Chair: Jim Gilchrist, Hugh Miller enthusiast

LITERARY PORTOBELLO WALKING TOUR

3.30-4.30pm                                                                     LIBRARY OUTSIDE

For an outlying suburb which only took root as a community in the mid to late 18th century, Portobello can boast an intriguing variety of literary associations from Arthur Conan Doyle to contemporary crime writers, Walter Scott to Jules Verne. During this walking tour, Jim Gilchrist reveals some often surprising connections.

STILL LIFE

3.30-4.30pm                                                                   LIBRARY UPSTAIRS          

Poet Henry Bell and photographer Angela Catlin collaborated to create Still Life, a document of the pandemic in Glasgow. Their poems and photographs “offer a glimpse of the grief, fear, solidarity and moments of joy that the experience of Covid-19 brought to Scotland”. Henry and Angela discuss the book and their approach to creating Still Life.

GARETH WILLIAMS: SONGS FROM THE LAST PAGE

7.30-9.00pm                                                            LIBRARY DOWNSTAIRS

An evening of music and conversation that has been specially created by local songwriter and composer Gareth Williams for Chamber Music Scotland as part of EventScotland’s Year of Stories. This collection of new songs takes the last page of a book and that moment when the reader silently reads the final lines of a story and transforms it into music. The event features Gareth at the piano, Katrina Lee on violin and Justyna Jablonska on cello. The acclaimed Scots singer Lori Watson joins them as a special guest to perform a brand new Song from the Last Page written especially for Portobello Book Festival.

Tickets for all events are available from Portobello Library
Books available from The Portobello Bookshop

T L HUCHU at THE PORTOBELLO BOOKSHOP

7.00-8.00pm                                                     

Come along to The Portobello Bookshop where T L Huchu will be discussing the two books in his acclaimed Edinburgh Nights series. 

The Library of the Dead and its sequel, Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments, are set in a dystopian Edinburgh, featuring Zimbabwean magic and Scottish pragmatism. 

Chair: Ann Landmann, Director of the Cymera Festival

Tickets for all events are available from Portobello Library
Books available from The Portobello Bookshop