My Edinburgh Book Festival experience in seven souvenirs

I just got back from three days at the Edinburgh International Book Festival where I was talking about The Stone Thrower at an event with Rodge Glass. It was my first time there and I was overwhelmed by the size of it. The EIBF camp on Charlotte Square is a mini-village with a market square in the middle filled with deckchairs bearing quotes by authors. Here’s my report, in the form of seven souvenirs I brought back from the Festival:

1 Author pass

With this pass, you get access to the Author’s Yurt – a haven tucked into the corner of the Festival site. In the Yurt you can eat lamb tagine with AL Kennedy or eavesdrop on Ian Rankin. There is a table of constantly updated foodstuffs and drinks – including a magical bottle of Jura whisky that refills itself every time it is spent.

This is where Rodge and I met the chair of our event, children’s writer Alan Durant, and were visited by numerous EIBF crew members responsible for all the various cogs of this incredible machine that produces more than 800 events in two and a half weeks.

Our event ran as smooth as custard. You can read a great report on it by Rob Around Books.

2 Amnesty bookmark

After my event with Rodge, I did an Amnesty International event. It was part of their daily Imprisoned Writers series. The focus of today’s event was persecuted women, and I read a poem called What I Will by Suheir Hammad – you can see her reading it herself at TED.

3 Chris Ware’s signature

I’m reading Chris Ware‘s astounding graphic novel Building Stories at the moment, and took one of its 14 separate pieces to get Chris to sign. His event, a discussion on his work with writer, critic and Booker judge Stuart Kelly, was accompanied by the sounds from outside of so many sirens, helicopters and low flying jet-fighters, that I wondered whether Edinburgh would still be there when we all left the theatre.

I queued for 90 minutes to get Chris’s signature – so long that half way through I nipped back to the Yurt to grab a big paper cup of wine. Chris was such a generous guy – I was right near the back of the queue and didn’t get to his signing table till after 11pm, and he was still smiling and chatting with each person and drawing little illustrations in people’s books and notebooks. He signed the illustrated blank page in the centre spread of my book in the tiniest handwriting and drew this little self-portrait. It was worth the wait.

4 Welcome back card

My hotel was just across the street from the Festival, and when I got back to my room, there was a bottle of red wine on my table and a bowl of fruit, along with a plate, knife and fork with which to eat it. There was also this card from the hotel manager saying ‘Welcome back to the Roxburgh Mrs Myers’.

5 Rick Gekoski’s book

I went to lots of great events at the festival, but one of my favourites was with rare book dealer, writer and broadcaster Rick Gekoski talking with Stuart Kelly about his new book, Lost, Stolen or Shredded. The book is about ‘the greatest losses to artistic culture’, from the burning of Lord Byron’s memoirs to a lost poem written by 9-year-old James Joyce.

He talked about his fascination with the way an absent piece of art can hold greater significance that a present one, citing the stolen Mona Lisa as an example. On the day it was announced the Mona Lisa had been stolen, the Louvre got the longest queue of people in its history – thousands of people – all waiting to see the blank space on the wall where the Mona Lisa had been. Franz Kafka and Max Brod were among them. Gekoski told an endless stream of fascinating anecdotes about artists and writers – including the time he thrashed Salman Rushdie at table tennis. Can’t wait to start reading this.

6 Doig magnet

On my last day in Edinburgh, I took a little break from the Book Festival to check out the Peter Doig exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery. Doig was born in Scotland but now lives in Trinidad, which is where he painted most of the works in the exhibition. I started a habit a couple of years ago of buying a tacky fridge magnet as a souvenir when I’m visiting new places – they all go on the filing cabinets in my attic. This magnet is of a painting inspired by a moment when Doig and his friend, the artist Chris Ofili, saw a man kill a pelican on a beach in Trinidad.

I’ve also started collecting sound recordings at art exhibitions. I love the ambient sound in galleries. Here is two minutes of the Doig exhibition. (You’ll need headphones to appreciate it fully.)

 

7 Portrait by Chris Close

Perhaps my favourite thing that I brought back from the Edinburgh Book Festival is a portrait by photographer Chris Close. Beside the Author’s Yurt, he had an outdoor white studio set up, where he got each author to strike a pose. Every evening, he printed up the photos in his garage and then put them on display around the Festival site – the number growing every day.

Chris has a great ability to get everyone doing something unique for their shot. I had just come out of my first event and had a cup of water, which he said could be my prop. The only interesting thing I could think to do with the cup was to try drinking it without holding it, so I held it in my teeth and tipped my head back. The first time round I managed to drink the whole cup without spilling a drop, which was photographically boring, so the cup was refilled to the brim and I tipped it over myself a couple of times – my first wet t-shirt photo shoot. I was still dripping when I went to do my Amnesty event a few minutes later. I bumped into Peggy Riley on the way out, and she later told me (after she’d seen the portrait) that when she had patted me on the back after the event, she thought I was soaked because I’d been nervous about the reading.

There were lots of memorable moments of my time in Edinburgh for which I don’t have souvenirs: meeting Martin Brown – the illustrator of Horrible Histories – who had a deflated pteranodon in his briefcase; a brilliant night of readings in the Guardian Spiegeltent by Evie Wyld, Sarah Hall and DW Wilson, following by a random and late night out with fellow festival authors Philip Meyer, DW Wilson, Cerrie Burnell and her publisher Penelope; eating sausages and mash and drinking whisky with US author Amity Gaige while talking about our kids; the shame of feeling absolutely lost during a conversation with Toby Litt and AL Kennedy in the Yurt as they cracked each other up with jokes about a DH Lawrence book I was too ashamed to say I hadn’t read; walking down a heaving Royal Mile among thousands of costumed Fringe Festival performers; and reading the Harry Potter graffiti in the Elephant House loo.

Thanks to all at the Edinburgh International Book Festival for an amazing few days. You are generous and wonderful hosts.

The Festival continues until 27 August – for tweets from EIBF, check out #edbookfest