The Edinburgh International Book Festival is broadening its programme with an array of innovative musical performances, moving beyond traditional author readings in tents. This year's event will feature Japanese Noh theatre at Greyfriars Kirk, one of the city's oldest religious sites, alongside compositions inspired by works from authors including Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, and William Dalrymple.
Breaking Away from Tradition
Jenny Niven, the festival's director, emphasised that such events aim to attract new audiences and celebrate the interplay between literature and other art forms. "Books don't have to be medicine," she stated, highlighting the festival's commitment to genre-blending experiences.
The programme includes a series of performances at Greyfriars Kirk, a 17th-century church built on the grounds of a former Franciscan monastery. As part of the Scotland to the World strand, Jamie's wildlife essay On Rona—about the remote Hebridean island North Rona—will be brought to life by the minimalist Noh Reimagined theatre company, along with Scottish musicians Brìghde Chaimbeul on smallpipes and Aidan O'Rourke on fiddle.
Musical Interpretations of Literature
The Dutch contemporary classical group New European Ensemble (NEuE) will perform four pieces written in response to Smith's work while she reads excerpts. In The Golden Road, Dalrymple's histories of Scottish colonialism in India will be accompanied by the fusion sounds of India Alba.
Niven noted that this approach reflects how fiction is often consumed through various mediums, such as film adaptations and plays. The festival will also feature live cookery events with food writers, a strand introduced in 2024. "It's a huge programme and there's absolutely space to play with different art forms," she said, adding that the initiative also aims to combat declining literacy rates and competition from social media.
Previous Genre-Bending Events
Niven has a history of commissioning mixed-genre shows, including poet Benjamin Zephaniah in a hip-hop production in Beijing and Michael Palin in a bird house at Melbourne Zoo. This year's festival will also host a blockbuster appearance by thriller writer John Grisham, author of The Pelican Brief and The Firm, who has sold an estimated 500 million books, alongside Ian Rankin at the 1,000-seater McEwan Hall.
A Serious Tone with 'Changing Your Mind' Theme
Despite the eclectic offerings, Niven emphasised the festival's serious undertone, with "Changing your mind" as its central theme. "In a world where people are very certain of their positions about all sorts of issues, all kinds of polarised, in all kinds of ways, how do we stay flexible in our thinking? How do we open our minds to new ideas, new ways of thinking?" she asked at the programme launch.
She clarified that the festival is not "deliberately pitting polarised views against each other for spectacle or for a headline," but rather aims to programme authors and speakers with different perspectives that challenge audiences.
Debates on Key Issues
The UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of sex, which has led to contested official advice about single-sex toilets from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, will be debated in an event chaired by former Supreme Court President Brenda Hale. Her guests will be legal experts on either side of the gender debate: Karon Monaghan KC, representing gender-critical groups, and Keio Yoshida, a barrister championing trans rights.
The festival will also feature big-tech critic Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification, in conversation with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Steve Crossan, who worked on Google's DeepMind AI project, will debate with Alan Finkel, Australia's former chief scientist and creator of the AI-free certification service ProudlyHuman.
Future of the Festival
Niven expressed excitement about competing projects from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Festivals Edinburgh to investigate new digital and data-mining technologies that could lead to a unified festivals box office or app. She stressed the importance of protecting the book festival's specific identity and said she is agnostic about what kind of technology could be introduced, potentially including more tailored ticketing systems for overseas audiences. "I'm open and I'm genuinely quite excited about the potential for these new tools to make more of what we have," she said.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival runs from 15 to 30 August.
