Book Festival E-news: November 2026 edition
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Win a £100 National Book Tokens gift card 📚
Your chance to enter competition below |
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News and inspiration this November ✨
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Hello readers! Since our last letter, we’ve been knee-deep in planning next August’s festival: visiting publishers, reading pitches and proofs, and gathering together to discuss our vision for the year(s) ahead. Lots of wonderful things to share… but all in good time.
For now, this e-news is all about:
Let’s go!
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Andrew Stephens is our new Director of Programming
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We’re thrilled to be welcoming Andrew Stephens to the Book Festival as our new Director of Programming, joining us full-time in January 2027.
Currently based in New York, Andrew will bring nearly 20 years of experience spanning journalism, literature, the performing arts, and public life, including a decade developing live journalism and public programming with The New York Times. A cultural strategist, writer, and musician, his work brings together creative practice, editorial vision, and institutional leadership.
Alongside our Director and CEO Jenny Niven, Andrew will lead the development of the Festival’s programme of author events, debates, and conversations, and help create unexpected and exciting new ways for writers, thinkers, and audiences to come together in Edinburgh and beyond.
We can’t wait to welcome Andrew into the Book Festival team!
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Dozens more brilliant events to enjoy now online! 🎉
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We’ve just dropped dozens of new recordings of events from our 2026 Festival – and you can watch them online right now!
Check out conversations like… award-winning literary translator Daniel
Hahn (If This Be Magic) unpacking the seemingly impossible task of translating Shakespeare; broadcaster-turned-novelist Sally Magnusson (The Shapeshifter’s Daughter) revealing the personal history behind her latest Orkney-set novel; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time author Mark Haddon reflecting on his foray into personal nonfiction with Leaving Home; professor and former While House official Tim Wu (The Age of Extraction) talking about the accelerating quest to extract data, attention, and profit and what any of us can do about it; and publishing legend Margaret Busby (Part of the Story) talking about her life’s work championing Black voices. All these, and many, many more!
Wherever you are in the world, watch the events back on a Donate What You Can basis.
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M John Harrison: The End of Everything
Master of science fiction M John Harrison joined us at the Festival back in August with the book just that secured him this year’s historic Booker Prize for Fiction win: The End of Everything. A dystopian satire set on a near-future Kent coast, the novel follows Phillip Tennent who collects washed up artefacts from the Channel and comes across a mysterious shapeshifting object that threatens to destabilise everything he thinks he knows. Hear him chatting to Ann Landmann about this post-apocalyptic adventure and how it chronicles the limits of human understanding.
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Ashley Douglas, Kate Lister & Jean Menzies: Ladies of Pleasure
Women’s sexuality is often missing from the history books, but this line-up sees three writers who’ve been thinking deeply about the role of sex in women’s stories: Flick author Kate Lister, Aphrodisia author Jean Menzies, and Ashley Douglas, author of With My Own Hand which uncovers Scotland’s 16th-century Sappho
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Candice Carty-Williams:
Queenie is Working on It
Don’t miss Candice Carty-Williams’ conversation about the singular pressures of 30-something womanhood and why she just couldn’t quit Queenie, the character that launched her writing career, as she chats with Sarah Gwonyoma about the much-anticipated sequel, Queenie is Working on It.
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Graeme Macrae Burnet:
Benbecula
Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet chats about Benbecula, his latest novel which explores a forgotten, real-life triple murder in the remote Hebrides in characteristically immersive, unsettling prose. A conversation about the territory where history, fiction, and psychological darkness collide…
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Colin Grant:
What We Leave We Carry
What We Leave We Carry: Voices of Migration to Britain saw Colin Grant travelling the UK, taking in profound stories of love, loss, and arrival. Hear him unpack the complexities of belonging and the weight of what’s left behind with contributors Sabir Zazai (from Scottish Refugee Council) and poet Clementine E Burnley.
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Support the Book Festival by donating what you can
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Our on demand events are offered on a Donate What You Can basis, making them accessible to all book lovers and idea devourers. You can select how much you’d like to donate either before or after watching the event.
If you are able, donating ensures that we, as a charity, can widen access to our events in August as well as supporting our year-round work in the community, including our Paper Trails library projects taking place across Edinburgh.
And if you’re watching with friends or family or as part of a group, we encourage you to consider paying a little extra. Doing so helps pay forward the joy of stories and help transform lives through the power of words. Every penny counts, and we’re grateful to all those who are able and choose to donate. Thank you.
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November Reading List:
The Knowledge is Power Edition 🍂
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This month we’re bringing you a round up of powerful, clear-eyed writing that tackles the many challenges we face right now. We live in strange times for sure, but there is real power in being able to name what’s going on. It’s only by bringing our problems out into the light that we can do something about them…
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As faith in billionaire-owned social media platforms continues to plummet and the internet feels increasingly like a sea of disinformation, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales reminds us of the importance of trust. Without it we have no knowledge, and without knowledge we can’t fight back. ‘Fascinating to read, intriguing to learn, and wonderful to contemplate,’ says Stephen Fry. An inspiring read! | Discover the book here >
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An alarming title for alarming times, Klein and Taylor’s new book reckons with the fast-growing ‘far-right apocalyptic alliance that’s on the move around the globe’ – and how we might resist it. ‘This urgent and essential book explains why we should be extremely frightened of, and extremely angry about, the man-made wreckage of the present,’ Max Porter writes, adding that it’s also a ‘vital rallying call’ for how to get ourselves out of it. | Discover the book here >
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This is a unique, revelatory exploration of how wealth – and the lack of it – shapes our lives, told by Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi. In it, Chalabi follows the lives of 10 individuals across five years, teasing out the human stories behind the data through clear-eyed writing, humour, deep humanity, and illustrations. A must-read book that demystifies the wealth gap and makes a compelling case for honesty and connection. | Discover the book here >
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Tech critic, sci-fi author, and seer of digital dystopia, Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification is a blistering take-down of formerly utopian tech companies’ constant chase for bigger profits. An utterly compelling book that helps you put your finger on what it is that’s gone wrong. It’ll undoubtedly make you very angry, then – once the fog has cleared – energised. (You can hear Doctorow chatting to Jimmy Wales at our Festival by clicking here.) | Discover the book here >
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‘Nothing is inevitable,’ Rebecca Solnit said in a Guardian interview about The Beginning Comes After the End earlier this year, and it’s this idea that underpins the book: yes, things are a mess, but the power to change the world is within our reach. If you enjoyed Hope in the Dark (her 2004 ‘paean to activism and hope’ that soared in popularity again after the 2016 election), this powerful, galvanising book will be up your street. | Discover the book here >
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And finally, a work of fiction that follows four friends in America across 20 years as they navigate political upheaval and economic and environmental instability. Lily King, author of Heart, the Lover wrote of The Wilderness, ‘I loved both the seriousness and the humour of this book, the intimacy and poignancy of these friendships, and the wise and harrowing examination of our current moment’. It’s been a staff favourite, and we think it’ll become one you want to go back to too. | Discover the book here >
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Win a £100 National Book Tokens gift card 📚
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Whether you’re still basking in the memories of this year’s brilliant Book Festival programme or already looking forward to next summer, our friends and sponsors at National Book Tokens are offering one lucky winner a gift beyond words this autumn: a £100/€120 National Book Tokens gift card!
Accepted in bookshops everywhere, from the biggest chains to the best independents, National Book Tokens let you choose all the books you want from the bookshops you love to visit. Available in a range of brilliantly bookish designs, there’s a book token for every reader. And with an 8-year expiry period, you can take your time finding your next great read.
For your chance to win, enter below by 17 December 2026.
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Discover Push the Boat Out 2026 ⛵
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And finally, if you’re looking for weekend plans, Edinburgh’s international poetry festival, Push the Boat Out, returns from 12–15 November, bringing together extraordinary voices from Scotland and around the world for four days of poetry, performance, conversation and new discoveries.
From 2025 T.S. Eliot Prize winner Karen Solie in conversation with Forward Prize Winner Sarah Howe, to a rare live appearance from acclaimed Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye, there’s plenty for book lovers to discover. Enjoy an evening of poetry, comedy and storytelling with Henry Normal, explore the possibilities of fiction and poetry with Jim Carruth and Grace Yee in Novels in Verse, or experience the Scottish premiere of Joelle Taylor‘s staged reading of Maryville.
PLUS! As an Edinburgh International Book Festival e-news reader, enjoy an exclusive 20% discount on events across the festival weekend* by using the code EDINTBF_20 when booking.
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*Offer subject to availability. Terms and conditions apply.
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And that’s all from us for now. Keep up with all the latest from the Book Festival on our social media (@edbookfest).
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