Edinburgh International Book Festival: Highlights for Children & Young Adults

This year, the Book Festival has a dedicated programme of events for Young Adults for the first time, including a YA takeover of the Spiegeltent on 11 August promising a day of events, discussions and workshops aimed at teenagers hosted by writer Cynthia Murphy.

Some of the most exciting YA writers in the world will be guests at the festival, including Alice Oseman, creator of the smash-hit graphic novel series Heartstoppers. On the series’ tenth anniversary, she will talk about where it all began for Charlie and Nick (17 August).

Molly X Chang will talk about her epic romantasy The Nightblood Prince, inspired by Chinese myth, about a reckless princess who forms a bond with a runaway prince who commands an army of vampires (15 August).

Rebecca F Kuang

Japanese novelist Asako Yuzuki is in both the adult and the YA programmes with her word-of-mouth sensation Butter, about a chef turned serial killer who poisons her lovers (23 August), as is bestselling American novelist RF Kuang, author of Yellowface, whose new novel Katabasis is a story of two magical PhD students who band together to rescue the soul of their academic adviser from hell (24 August).

Another author taking part in both sections is Scottish writer Kirsty Logan, with a new collection of short stories, No & Other Love Stories, about female desire down the centuries from a medieval monastery to a 1990s high school (22 August). Writer, activist and model Monroe Bergdorf is to speak to young people about the thorny question of truth as it relates to a range of topics from beauty standards to cancel culture (21 August).

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The festival promises additional facilities for children and families this year, and a wide-ranging programme for readers of all ages, from the tenth birthday celebrations for Ross Collins’ There’s A Bear on my Chair (10 August), to Michael Rosen’s introduction to Shakespeare for older children (23 August).

Jacqueline Wilson is such an enduring and well-loved figure in children’s literature that some of her fans now have children of their own. She will be at the Book Festival for a special event looking at her life as a writer with a back catalogue of more than 100 books (24 August).

Cressida Cowell

Cressida Cowell will read from How to Train Your Dragon School, the latest book in her enormously popular series (22 August). AF Steadman promises a new story in the blockbuster Skandar series, with curses, bloodthirsty unicorns, epic adventures and unlikely heroes (11 August).

Dr Lucia Perez-Dias will explore how the world repairs itself, and how we can help, taking young readers on an epic journey through time and space to witness what the planet was like, why it changed, and what the future holds (9 August). Polly Faber openes up the surprisingly fascinating subject of recycling, looking at what happens to the things we throw away (10 August).

Gardener and TV presenter Frances Tophill takes readers on a journey though 20 special gardens (23 August), while Joseph Coelho and Fiona Lumbers share the joys of gardening with some of the festival’s youngest readers (24 August). Michael Rosen and illustrator Chris Riddell prove it’s never too early to make a start on Shakespeare with Pocket Shakespeare: A Beginner’s Guide to the Best Bits of the Bard (23 August).

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