ED2012 Books ED2012 News

More information about World Writers’ Conference announced

By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 23 July 2012

More details have been announced about the World Writers’ Conference that will kick off during this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival.

As previously reported, the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference 2012-13, being staged by the EIBF and British Council, is inspired by an historic gathering of writers in 1962, and will see 50 literary types from 25 different countries debate issues at the Book Festival’s Charlotte Square Gardens base, and also live online.

The topics up for debate will be based on those discussed at the 1962 event, and amongst the questions to be asked will be if literature should be political, whether there should be a ‘national literature’, and what the future of the novel holds, while other sessions will look at ‘style vs content’ and censorship today.

Among the writers due to take part are eminent Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, Nigerian author Chika Unigwe, American writer Nathan Englander, Turkish author Elif Shafak, Denmark’s Janne Teller, science fiction and fantasy writer China Miéville, and Scotland’s own Ian Rankin and Irvine Welsh.

Book Festival Director Nick Barley told ThreeWeeks: “The Writers’ Conference is a fantastic opportunity for Edinburgh audiences to meet and mingle with a phenomenal line up of international authors, and to get involved in a debate which we believe will reverberate around the globe”.

Tickets are available from www.edbookfest.co.uk while the debates will be webcast at www.edinburghworldwritersconference.org.