14 August - Friday
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Edinburgh Books
2pm
Jim Haynes: A Roving Life
Jim Haynes is a living legend. Flâneur, writer, publisher, former bookshop owner and host to thousands over the years he’s spent welcoming strangers to his Parisian atelier for Sunday dinner, his is a life more spectacular than most. We can’t wait to hear his tales, in conversation with Ryan Van Winkle.
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Blue Blazer
3pm
Magic Books and Learned Animals
Gordon Bruce is a musician, magician and key holder of Scotland’s Magic History Archive, a collection of thousands of magic books that he has accumulated over the last forty years and some of which form part of our Magic Trail. Aged, obscure, amusing, just plain strange: Gordon will guide his audience through the highlights of this astonishing archive.
Sharon Whyte is an Edinburgh-based artist whose work is focused around her interest in the history of magic and unusual types of performance. She’ll be talking about her exhibition, A Sage of the Stage, Not a Beast in a Cage: A pictorial homage to the ‘educated’ animal performers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, back from a successful tour of duty at the Magic Circle in London and now gracing the graceless confines of the West Port as part of our Magic Trail.
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Peter Bell Books
4pm
Peter Burnett: The History of Crisps
Crisps are greasy. They are oily. Crisps live in an ambient world inside their silvered packets, but always their world meets ours. Why do we need crisps? Is there a logic to crisps? Peter Burnett will expound on the crisps chapter of his moreish The Supper Book and offer his researches into this amazing foodstuff. Edible samples will be provided.
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Owl & Lion Gallery
5pm
Isabelle Ting and J. O. Morgan talk bookbinding
Isabelle Ting, co-founder of the Owl & Lion Gallery, is our favourite local bookbinder. She’ll be taking a break from organising her popular workshops to chat about being a professional bookbinder – the highs, the lows and the impressively fiddly bits.
Poet J. O. Morgan (also on Thursday at 5pm) is a bookbinding enthusiast. More used to the quiet contemplation of the craft than telling all, we hope to question his motives.
Top bookbinding tips almost certainly guaranteed.
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Owl & Lion Gallery
7pm
Bookbinding Workshop
Professional bookbinder and co-founder of the Owl & Lion Gallery, Isabelle Ting, will be teaching a lucky few to make their own beautiful book using various binding techniques. The theme will be magic, so be prepared for strange goings-on. Please bring lots of interesting papers to use as book covers.
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Tea Tree Tea Café
8pm
Literary Twestival
This is the world’s first Literary Twestival (until proven otherwise, preferably over our dead, tweeted-out bodies). We’ll be taking the social media craze, Twitter, and giving it a decidedly literary twist. In case you're wondering - Twitter allows you to post 140 character tweets and provides a marvellous place for literary experimentation. We’ll be thinking up new collective nouns, passing the plot and encouraging tweet-long West Port Short Stories. We’ll also be asking guest authors to get tweeting. Look out for members of the Twitterati (prolific twitterers), and typewriters for old-school tweeting. Twitterers and non- twitterers equally welcome. Cakes and beverages available, as of course, is WiFi.