EIBF - Sunday 28th August

Carol Ann Duffy described her as ‘an inspirational presence in British poetry – funny, feisty, female and full of feeling’, and Liz Lochhead has now become National Poet for Scotland. Of course, Lochhead has been attending the Book Festival regularly since its launch in 1983, but it is a particular joy to welcome her back, as her last visit was in 2010 when she joined an emotional farewell to the previous Makar, Edwin Morgan.

Glasgow-based author Rodge Glass moves into graphic novel territory for Dougie’s War, in which a Scottish soldier returns home to Glasgow after a tour of duty in Afghanistan but struggles with civilian life. This powerful book also contains interviews with real-life sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder. Glass discusses his book with Pat Mills, one of the UK’s most influential comic and graphic novel authors. In addition to founding 2000AD in the 1970s, Mills was responsible for the seminal comic strip Charley’s War, which provided the inspiration for Dougie’s War.

Does new writing from Scotland have a direct bearing on our sense of Scottish identity? Or is our fiction merely a response to perceptions of Scottishness that are shaped by other forces? And has a new era of the Creative Writing Course made any difference to the stories we tell about ourselves? In this event literary critic and editor of the Scottish Review of Books, Alan Taylor, is joined by novelists Louise Welsh and Sophie Cooke to discuss writing in Scotland today.

As it passes from current affairs into recent history, the era of New Labour is proving fertile territory for young British novelists. Belbin's pacy crime thriller is set in 1997 as New Labour comes to power, and a young female MP finds herself accosted by a rapist whose freedom she has just secured. Meanwhile Wallace's latest, Killing the Messenger, is set in the final days of the Labour government and an attempt to use Facebook for subliminal mass communication.

Following on from the success of his novel And the Land Lay Still, which won the 2010 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year, James Robertson argues that if Scotland wishes to become a politically mature society then a degree of mutual trust needs to exist between the governed and the governors. But this is impossible if ‘sensitive’ information, such as that relating to the Lockerbie bombing, is habitually withheld. He discusses his ideas with Menzies Campbell, former Leader of the Liberal Democrats. Sold Out

He spends his summers on one of the flatter Scottish islands, but this year he joins us in Edinburgh to celebrate the new complete collection of his mountain poetry, Getting Higher. Alongside some of his familiar poems Greig reads brand new material, and previously unpublished works including the first one he ever attempted, written in 1972. Spend an hour on an intoxicating journey into the mountains.