Blackwell’s bookshop in Edinburgh must be one of the nicest possible venues to talk about your book, right in the heart of the Edinburgh Festival. Blackwell’s loyal following among readers in Edinburgh is well deserved, and last Thursday’s ‘Writers at the Fringe’ event drew an impressive audience.
Events organiser Ann Landmann had invited me back in the spring to be part of her Festival line up, and I was delighted to find myself with a very diverse group of authors, all of whom have received national recognition. There were five of us, including crime fiction writer James Oswald, poet Tessa Ransford, Saltire prize winner Sue Peebles, and Gavin Francis, who writes amazingly vividly about his travels at the north and south poles.
And there was me, the debut author among them, but in such warm, appreciative company, with an audience among whom many had taken the trouble to read each author in advance, it was a pleasure to talk about the journey that was Daughter of Catalonia.
There are four more ‘Writers at the Fringe’ events at Blackwell’s during August, each Thursday evening at 6pm. I would thoroughly recommend them to anyone taking in the Festival this year.