Book Festival Trip 2025

 We enjoyed a trip to the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 21 August 2025, where pupils attended the keynote speech by Laura Bates, who was talking about her campaign against Everday Sexism, and her new novel, the stirring fantasy novel, Sisters of Fire and Fury. This is the second book in her Arthurian legend series and pupils were delighted to receive a free copy of the book, signed by the author. Laura's books are of course available in the school library.

We also got a chance to wander around the Book Festival site, including the bookshop. It was very exciting to meet some other YA authors in the Book Signing Tent including Sarah Crossan, Bea Fitzgerald, Danielle Jawando, and Margaret McDonald.

Edinburgh International Book Festival

We really enjoyed our visit to the Edinburgh International Book Festival today. 

As well as trying out all the activities at the Teen Takeover Day, we loved browsing through all the wonderful books in the Book tent (and Mrs Lumsden's 'wish list' is longer than ever). Too many books, too little time!

We attended a talk with with Lauren (Wren) James, a prolific author who read from their new novel, 'Last Seen Online'. They also spoke about the writing process and love of crime novels, and true crime. Lauren also talked about her work with the 'Heartstopper' series and the adaptation of 'The Loneliest Girl in the Universe.' Students were also gifted a copy of Lauren's latest novel and were delighted to be able to meet them and get the books signed after the event. 

 

Book Festival

Pupils from the Advanced Higher English class and some of our pupil library assistants visited the Edinburgh International Book Festival today, where they heard from three authors shortlisted for the YA Book Prize. Danielle Jawando, Alex Wheatle and Becky Jerams spoke about their shortlisted novels and our students had to a chance to meet Danielle and Becky in the signing tent afterwards. 

You can read more about all the books and shortlisted authors here https://www.thebookseller.com/events/the-ya-book-prize?tab=shortlist and all the books are available to borrow from the Library now.