Anyone familiar with Edinburgh can’t have failed to notice the impressive church and graveyard set back off the north end of Lothian Road, but how much do you “actually” know about The Parish Church of St Cuthbert’s?
The Forest’s first green shoots inched above our very own West Port soil more than a decade ago, transplanting in time to the Old Congressional Church on Bristo Place. It was threatened last year by a bad case of Bankrupted Charity Dieback, so we’re happy and relieved to welcome the cafe, social centre and arts space to its new home in Tollcross, and to this year’s list of venues.
Just a hop, skip and teeny jump from the West Port sits a huddle of venues, Edinburgh’s arts quarter, made up of the Usher Hall, the Lyceum and the Traverse Theatre; an unrivalled density of culture outwith the collected majesty of the West Port’s bookshops.
Author/columnist Lucy Mangan is a bit of an odd connecting thread between two venues on the same street of Edinburgh, but there we are.
The West Port wears a number of identities: the literary, the creative and the lewd. Nowhere do the profane, the profound and the artistic combine more completely than in second-hand genre bookstore, Pulp Fiction.
Armchair Books is a long-standing West Port Book Festival venue,with a great cast of characters that traipse in and out between the books. This year, it’s home to the ever-popular event Wince! Our intrepid literary detective Chris walks us through the ACB experience.
Starring robots, penguins, Two Shades of Gaelic, chips, book covers, Young Adult Fiction, tall tales, seductive stories, brilliant authors and MORE…
Our Jess talks about one of her favourite writing websites. ‘That message is just an electronic version of your flatmate asking you to knock on her door at half seven, and if she doesn’t get up, to come in and pull up her blinds.’
What goes better with books and festivals than a bit of cake? Nothing! That’s right, it’s time again for the West Port Book Festival bake sale(s)!
And we need you to bake and buy cakes.
Special guest post! Edinburgh Books regular & Maxwell scholar Eddie Fenwick favours us with a blog.
