Tuesday 16 continued... Sharon Blackie 12:30 A Journey to Authenticity and Belonging Garden Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] Novelist, storyteller and psychologist Sharon Blackie has turned her attention to the stories buried deep in Europe’s wild Celtic landscapes. If Women Rose Rooted is a book about contemporary women weary of a male-dominated world and reclaiming their own power. Inspired by her own breakdown in the face of modern inauthenticity, Blackie describes a struggle that is both personal and universal.
Nothing But the Poem on Kathleen Jamie & Alice Oswald
Events are 1 hour long and take place in Charlotte Square Gardens unless otherwise stated.
13:00- Reading Workshop 14:30 Writers’ Retreat, £15.00 [£12.00]
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Join Lilias Fraser from the Scottish Poetry Library for a discussion around a selection of poems from two leading British poets, Kathleen Jamie and Alice Oswald. Explore the work and ambitious scope of these poets, who use a vast scale of imagination and literary reference to comment on how we inhabit the world. No background knowledge is required and poems will be provided.
Edna O’Brien 13:30 One of the Greatest Irish Writers Baillie Gifford Main Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] Philip Roth has called it Edna O’Brien’s masterpiece; for John Banville it’s savage, tender and true; Claire Messud describes it as arduous and beautiful. The Little Red Chairs is the work of a truly great Irish writer at the height of her powers. A decade since she wrote her last novel, O’Brien discusses an astonishing story that charts the consequences of a fatal attraction.
Ian Cobain 14:00 The Shocking Secrets of the State Studio Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] Even in the WikiLeaks era, there are complex forces at work helping the state keep its secrets hidden. That’s what journalist Ian Cobain argues in his eye-opening book, The History Thieves. Secret surveillance; unreported wars in the 1970s; hidden links with terrorists during the Troubles: Cobain uncovers some uncomfortable truths of a system that defrauds us, letting us think we enjoy the freedoms of a democracy. Chaired by Ruth Wishart.
THE SCOTLAND THAT SHAPED US
Cal Flyn & Candace Savage 14:15 Settlers and Colonists: Uncomfortable Histories Garden Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] Once fêted as the heroic ‘discoverer’ of Gippsland in the wilderness of 1830s Australia, Cal Flyn’s relative Angus McMillan was recently identified as the perpetrator of gruesome massacres of the Gunai people. Flyn’s Thicker Than Water is a personal account of this troubling story. A descendant of the ‘pioneers’ who settled in the Saskatchewan prairies, Candace Savage’s A Geography of Blood retells the prairies story with help from First Nations people.
Story Shop 15:00- The Spiegeltent, 15:30 Free & Drop-in Immerse yourself in short stories at Story Shop, hosted by Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust. Hear up-and-coming writers living and working in Edinburgh today. Check www.cityofliterature.com or our website in July for the line-up. GUEST SELECTOR: JACKIE KAY
Matthew Kay & Sam Ruddock with Jackie Kay 15:15 Look at You Now, Our Haunted Hero Baillie Gifford Main Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] Our thoughts on the First World War are largely shaped by poems written at the time. A century later, Norwich-based Sam Ruddock set up the Fierce Light project, inviting poets to create new work reflecting on the impact of war. Jackie Kay’s contribution, Private Joseph Kay, is about her grandfather, who handed down songs rather than bullets. Kay’s son Matthew has turned the project into a beautiful film, from which extracts will be shown today. THE SCOTLAND WE’RE SHAPING
Joyce McMillan 15:30 Scottish Theatre’s Remarkable Journey Writers’ Retreat, £8.00 [£6.00] With the resignation of Laurie Sansom as director of the National Theatre of Scotland, the nation’s dramatic future is again the subject of fierce debate. One person who’ll be at the heart of that discussion is theatre critic Joyce McMillan, who’s charted Scotland’s cultural renaissance through its theatre over the past 30 years. Here she explores some of the defining moments, as recorded in her collected reviews, Theatre in Scotland: A Field of Dreams.
Matthew Qvortrup 15:45 The Most Powerful Woman on the Planet Studio Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] For at least a decade, Angela Merkel has been the most influential woman in world politics. Fighting for stability in the Eurozone and dishing out stiff economic medicine to Greece, Merkel has also been an architect of austerity politics. But will the migration crisis cause her downfall? Full of exclusive research, Professor of Political Science Matthew Qvortrup’s new book on the German leader is a must-read.
Gerry Cambridge & Keith Houston 16:00 In Praise of Books and Typography Garden Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] Editor of celebrated poetry journal The Dark Horse, Gerry Cambridge complements his poems with a passion for typesetting. Today he discusses The Printed Snow, an exquisitely presented essay on how to typeset poetry. Nobody knows more about pilcrows and interrobands than Keith Houston, an Edinburgh-based punctuation expert. Here, Houston presents his paean to the most brilliant invention of modern times: The Book. Chaired by Stuart Kelly. THE BAILLIE GIFFORD EVENT
Thomas Keneally
17:00 Messing About with Napoleon Baillie Gifford Main Theatre, £12.00 [£10.00] The author of the 1982 Booker Prizewinning novel Schindler’s Ark (later made into the film Schindler’s List) has a glorious track record for historical fiction that’s powerfully relevant to modern concerns. In Napoleon’s Last Island Thomas Keneally reimagines an encounter between the exiled Bonaparte and a family living on the isolated South Atlantic island of St Helena. Today he joins us from Australia to talk about his latest novel and luminous writing career.
Amnesty International Imprisoned Writers Series 17:30- Beyond 1984 18:15 Baillie Gifford Corner Theatre, FREE: Tickets available from the Box Office on the day of the event In the wake of the Investigatory Powers Bill, we are fast becoming a surveillance state. As our government collects emails, telephone calls and internet search histories, are we heading toward a future bleaker than Orwell’s 1984? Amnesty is campaigning to end privacy infringement and mass surveillance programmes. Authors reading work on the subject include Matt Brown, Ian Cobain, Tom Gash and Myrna Kostash.