Malcolm Jack

Stephen Kelman set for Edinburgh Book Festival appearance

Author of Booker longlisted Pigeon English

9 Aug 2011

Probably most humdrum offices in Britain hide an aspiring creative type who dreams of ditching the day job and succeeding at what they love. For Stephen Kelman, the dream came dramatically true. Penned while he worked as a council administrator, his…

Alma Mater - One-person experience blending film and promenade theatre

Sneak preview of what might well be the future of the Fringe show

26 Jul 2011

In the vast sun-drenched glass-ceilinged foyer of Glasgow’s Briggait, there’s a room within a room -- a rudimentary windowless wooden box of about 18 cubic metres. It might resemble a wonkily-constructed homemade garden shed, but it’s the collapsible…

Rebecca Gowers

12 Aug 2009

‘How you write about a woman somewhere in her 20s without being labeled chick-lit, I don’t know,’ says Rebecca Gowers, frustrated by the fact that her novels are so often lumped into the genre of pastel-covered books all about modern ladies cooing over…

David Aaronovitch

How paranoid ideas shaped modern history

7 Aug 2009

It’s easy to assume that conspiracy theorists are odd, simple, lonely blokes who still live with their parents and spend far too much time on the internet. But in truth, they’re usually otherwise normal, intelligent and rational people. Author…

Anthony Suau's World Press Photo shot

The winning photographer's disturbing vision of America

13 Jul 2009

Wars, from Georgia to the Middle East, and the human suffering they cause featured heavily among the winners of the World Press Photo competition this year. American snapper Anthony Suau scooped the top prize for a shot that starkly and ambiguously…

Sadie Jones

Orange nominee who won’t stick to the script

21 Aug 2008

‘Not a bad start,’ comes Londoner Sadie Jones’ modest response when she’s reminded of the remarkable success of her debut novel The Outcast – a nominee for the Orange Prize for Fiction and one of 2008’s best sellers to date. ‘I’m just in a constant…

Gavin Francis

Trekking round the back door of Europe

14 Aug 2008

Edinburgh-based GP-turned-adventurer and travel writer Gavin Francis’ next book – charting an epic motorcycle schlep from Orkney to Sydney – will finish on an ironic endnote. Having survived the mean streets of Beirut and New Delhi on its journey, his…

Helen Walsh

Warrington author cleanses the past

7 Aug 2008

If Helen Walsh’s Betty Trask Award-winning debut Brass came from the guts, its follow-up Once Upon a Time in England comes from the heart. Set in the author’s native Warrington, the book charts two decades of English/Malaysian family the Fitzgeralds…

After the flood

Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

22 Jul 2008

Hurricane Katrina not only devastated a whole city, it nearly destroyed a legendary jazz culture. Malcolm Jack hears how Edinburgh has opened its arms to the top New Orleans players.

Foe play - Class Enemy

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

In times of both war and peace, Haris Pasovic has created crucial theatre. Malcolm Jack speaks to him about taking a story set in 1970s Brixton and plunging it into contemporary Sarajevo.

Annie Lennox

Festival of Politics

22 Jul 2008

Ex-Eurythmics leader raises the often neglected issue of HIV and AIDS. With a comfortable haul of 80 million album sales to her name so far, Annie Lennox has recently turned her voice from pop music to hollering in support of a far nobler cause: that of…

Neil Boorman

19 Jul 2007

To the casual observer, burning £20,000 worth of expensive designer gear to cinders in a central London park might not seem like the wisest of actions. For lifestyle journalist Neil Boorman, this ritualistic, highly public destruction of his worldly…

Russell Howard

21 Aug 2006

Howard is obsessed fleeting glitches in normality, when monks carry skateboards, or goths discreetly eat sweets and he’s a thoroughly endearing fellow, who loses himself to unnecessary babbling a little too often. Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until…