EIBF 2008: Wednesday 13th August

Find out more about the nuts and bolts of crime fiction with bestselling Scottish crime writer Aline Templeton, who offers a practical guide to plot, character, location and tension – and warns of the five clichés to avoid. (Maximum 20 places)

Another delight as one of Scotland’s most beloved poets and dramatists returns to the Book Festival. Liz Lochhead’s plays have been performed to great success in theatres across the world but what happens afterwards, when we are left with the printed word, when the play becomes literature? Join her as she celebrates the literary importance of the dramatic heritage.

The People’s Act of Love, set in Siberia during the Russian Revolution, was one of 2005’s most important and highly acclaimed novels. For the background of his brilliant new novel, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, award-winning Scottish writer James Meek draws on his own experience as a Guardian war correspondent in Afghanistan.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four hidden away on one of Scotland’s most beautiful islands. The Isle of Jura Writer Retreat Programme pays tribute to that inspiring legacy. Scottish poet and fiction writer John Burnside and Sri Lankan-born novelist Romesh Gunesekera describe their recent month-long residencies and tell of the inspiration of the island.

Feisty, funny debut novels about the perils of love. Helen Fitzgerald, Australian-born and now living in Glasgow, spins a spirited, increasingly dark tale in Dead Lovely; while in Claudia Schreiber’s Emma’s Luck, a huge bestseller and film in Germany, a lonely woman on a farm finds a Ferrari, a man and a large amount of cash…

Top Book Festival favourite Iain Banks returns,with his banter, excellent conversation and prodigious imagination. Continuing to alternate between ‘mainstream’ fiction and science fiction, his most recent title Matter explores his remarkable Culture Universe. Come and meet an endlessly inventive brain.