An Oasis

Edinburgh International Book Festival

, Reading

I'm kind of excited that the Edinburgh International Book Festival has announced the line-up - the Scotsman calls it an American invasion for book festival.

Catherine Lockerbie, Director, launched the 2003 programme and mentioned some of the world’s most acclaimed authors, thinkers and speakers who will be taking part.

“We’ve seen over the last few years an incredible growth in demand for what the Book Festival offers: excitement, discovery, the chance for a really good argument. The public are hungry to talk about books and subjects of every kind, to swap ideas with the world’s leading thinkers, to feel their heads buzzing with new thoughts. For 2003, we’ve aimed to create a programme with some of the greatest names in world writing, which will whet and feed that appetite even further. “

The Book Festival runs August 9 to 25 in Charlotte Square Gardens (literally about 40 seconds from my flat) in Edinburgh’s historic World Heritage site.

There will be over 550 authors appearing at over 650 events including;Mario Vargas Llosa, Ben Okri, Susan Sontag, Ariel Dorfman, Tama Janowitz, Edmund White, Alan Ayckbourn, Ian Rankin, Clive James, Irvine Welsh, Douglas Coupland, Paulo Coelho, Joanne Harris, Pat Barker, Iain Banks, Robert Winston, David Starkey, Graham Swift, Tariq Ali & Kate Adie.

I'm keen to attend George Monbiot's event where he'll field audience questions on any topic, the "Cloned babies, what progress really means, the state of the media" debate, Douglas Coupland (although I have trouble reading him - apart from Microserfs), David Steel giving the National Library of Scotland Donald Dewar Lecture, John Kay: Society and Economics, Perspectives on Progress: The RSA Debates in association with The Economist - in fact I want to go to loads of it. Need to find a printed brochure, it aint easy to browse so many events online.

Posted by Paul at June 12, 2003 04:07 AM |