🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 30 April - 6 May 2025

Welcome to the 86th weekly edition of the Culture Minute: a round-up of Edinburgh’s local creative news, events, jobs and opportunities.
If I’ve missed anything please get in touch.

👀 The most-viewed links from the last Edinburgh Culture Minute:

1. 🥁 Ezra Collective announced as Fringe by the Sea Saturday headliners.
2. 🎭 Jodie Comer to bring Prima Facie to the Lyceum.
3. 📆 Busy calendar of events at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

News:

📚 The first 14 events at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival have been announced. Appearing across August will be:

Ruth Jones, Mark Kermode, Nicola Sturgeon, Maggie O'Farrell, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Anne Applebaum & Edward Wong, Ally McCoist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Steven Lenton, Laura Bates, Yulia Navalnya, Asako Yuzuki, Ian McEwan and R F Kuang.

• They will all be at the McEwan Hall as part of The Front List series.
• Tickets for these events are due to go on sale at 10am on Tuesday 6 May at this link.
• More than 600 more writers are due to be announced on Tuesday 10 June.
• Jenny Niven, the Edinburgh International Book Festival Director and CEO, said: “We are thrilled to be returning to the beautiful McEwan Hall, and expanding our partnership with Underbelly to present 14 The Front List events in 2025. At this challenging moment in history and politics, we’ll be offering a comprehensively informed and critical eye on international affairs, and also the chance to escape them through the work of some of the world’s foremost fiction writers, entertainment, and sporting figures. There’s plenty more to come in our full programme announcement, but we hope our line-up for The Front List offers a delicious taster of what you can expect from this year’s Book Festival.”

📙 Another big writer coming to town… Argonaut Books will be hosting award-winning novelist Sayaka Murata for the only Scottish date on her launch tour for Vanishing World. One of the most celebrated of the new generation of Japanese writers, Murata has won the prestigious Akutagawa, Gunzo, Noma and Mishima Yukio Prizes. - It’s on Monday 20 of October at St. Paul’s & St. George’s Church on York Place, a fully accessible venue, and tickets are here. Chairing the event: .

🎤 Cast members from cult comedy series ‘The Comic Strip Presents’ will be at the Fringe this summer. Hosted by Robin Ince, the five-day series of shows will involve screenings and chats with the show’s revolving cast of stars. - Tickets are on sale now via Just The Tonic and there’s a feature on it by Bruce Dessau in The Standard here.

✍️ Entries are open for the Edinburgh University Creative Writing Conference. Anyone from inside or outside the uni can enter. Writer in Residence Michael Pedersen says:

“The CW Conference is a punchy run of panels, talks, readings and a book launch from some of the best in the literary business. Advice on how to get published by agents and publishers; insights into the world's leading book festival, and what it's like to work as a creative freelancer; readings from the winners of our UoE Writing Prizes, and a whopping launch for a new creative writing anthology – From Arthur's Seat.” - It’s on Friday 9 May and more details are here.

⮑ Portobello poet Michael Pedersen is also the cover star of May’s issue of The List. He discusses his seafaring lighthouse-set novel Mucka Flugga with Brian Donaldson in The List here.

⮑ May’s edition of The Skinny is also out now and spotlights the Falastin Film Festival, dedicated to sharing Palestinian culture at the Scottish Storytelling Centre from 15-19 May. - More details here.

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