Jenny Niven Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival

The Scotsman

Jenny Niven Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival speaks to The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00I'm Jenny Niven, I'm the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival

00:04and we're here on site this morning as you can see building the site ready for

00:09our opening on Saturday the 10th of August. Where exactly are we in Edinburgh and

00:14Jenny for maybe people who've not been to this part of the city before? So we

00:18are on our brand new site which is on in front of me is Middle Meadow Walk so

00:24we're right next to the Meadows which is the huge big park right in the middle of

00:27the city and the building round about is the Edinburgh Futures Institute where the

00:32festival is based is the former Royal Infirmary so we're just up from

00:36Chambers Street Museum we're just kind of opposite George Herriot School so a

00:40new location for the Book Festival but right in the thick of it where the other festivals are.

00:44So people will have been in the building over here before but not for a long time?

00:49That's right the building has been closed for I think more than a decade

00:55The Royal Infirmary played a massive part in so many people's lives in

01:00Edinburgh and it's just absolutely wonderful to see it transformed as this

01:05new development as part of the University of Edinburgh. It's lovely to see a new lease of life for such an iconic building.

01:12So the festival feels as if it's got a very new incarnation here you're going to have

01:16events inside the building but also outside in some of the pop-up venues

01:21that we can see in the background here. Just tell us a wee bit about the

01:24festival experience people will get this year?

01:26Yeah so we're really excited about being able to offer this new festival experience.

01:30You can hear the clunking in the background as the tents and all of our

01:34outdoor structures get built. You might be able to see in the back of the shot

01:37is the festival bookshop, the beautiful Spiegel tent which is right behind me

01:42where we'll be doing lots of fun and late-night programming and there's bars

01:46there's great food offer then there's a couple of outdoor venues for our

01:50standard Book Festival programming and then we're using the inside of the

01:54beautiful Futures Institute as well for some of our larger venues and also some

01:59of the more intimate and more workshop space type work that we're presenting as

02:04well. So wherever you are we're not quite there yet you can see we're halfway

02:08through the build but once the festival is open wherever you are in this

02:12courtyard site or within the Futures Institute you should feel that you're

02:15part of one holistic Book Festival experience.

02:18And you've also got some events happening at the Macune Hall which is a couple of minutes walk away isn't it?

02:23Yeah so that's right we're working in the Macune Hall as well in a brilliant

02:27partnership with Underbelly and as you say it's just a couple of minutes walk

02:31from here to George Square so that you can go to the events there and then

02:34or Bristol Square and then come back to here at the Futures Institute but

02:38we're running a program there of ten kind of headline events as part of the

02:42festival program called The Front List and you can see writers there like

02:46Salman Rushdie or Dolly Alderton or Richard Oseman or the amazing Jackie Kay

02:52is interviewing Alan Cumming and folks Massa just on Saturday night so looking

02:56forward to that all kicking off. So it feels like the site here is a bit more

03:01kind of plugged into the rest of Edinburgh's festivals in terms of what's

03:05happening around the site is that something you'd like to see develop in

03:09terms of new collaborations in future years? That's right we're absolutely

03:13delighted to be able to bring the festival closer in to some of the other

03:18festivals because I think that's reflective of how a lot of audiences

03:21behave in August you go and you pick and choose you go and see things that all

03:25the different amazing programs that are happening and also I think it helps to

03:29create that sense of atmosphere and for us it's also great because this is sort

03:34of reclaimed land this you know we're not displacing anything by holding the

03:38festival here because actually there's been nothing on this site for such a

03:41long time so it's an excellent way to bring more festival activity into this

03:45key festival area without creating any more pressure on the city and but it's

03:50also great because a lot of the venues are where we are and is really

03:54accessible on foot and we'd like to encourage as many people as possible to

03:57come to the festival on foot or by public transport and that's really quite

04:01viable here where we are now. What would you say to anyone who's never been to the

04:05book festival in particular before but has been to the other Edinburgh festivals?

04:09I think we would like to inspire curiosity in people basically publishing

04:14is so exciting and wide-ranging that anything that you're interested in

04:20there's somebody writing a fabulous book about it and our job as programmers I

04:24think is to bring that together but also maybe have an eye on where things are

04:27going so we're really an exciting place for insights and well our whole program

04:32this year is themed around future tense so what's coming next in politics or

04:37economics or society or even the imagination what are some of the really

04:41pioneering ways that writers are working just now and I think you might

04:45if you've not been before you might open the program and see one or two names

04:48that you recognize and loads that you don't and we'd love people to pick up on

04:52that sense of discovery and maybe try something new that they haven't thought

04:55of before and also if you have been to the festival before but you know

05:00somebody that hasn't that's a good challenge to bring them in with you this

05:04year because I do think that there's something in the program for a really

05:07broad range of interests and once you're here you'll find something else.

05:11Give us a couple of examples of maybe stars of the future to watch out for

05:15who've got events on in the next couple of weeks here. That's a good question

05:20we've got loads of stars of the present and so we've got an amazing I think

05:24there's 13 people in the booker shortlist or long list sorry and seven

05:28of them are appearing in the festival so we're definitely where it's at for

05:31publishing of the moment and there's a couple of writers on there that you

05:34maybe wouldn't expect which is very exciting but we've also got a lovely

05:38strand at lunch times and partnerships with the Scottish Book Trust where we're

05:43platforming brand new writers who've never been published before and there's

05:47some really great work in there so that might be where you see the next Irvine

05:50Welsh or Jenny Fagan and those events are free or pay what you can so we're

05:55hoping that lots of people will come and try something new with us there.

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