West Port Book Festival 2012: day 4

The last day of the Festival started late, with a walking tour of area, moving off from Edinburgh Books. Once everyone had settled down after this, Dennis O’Donnell regaled the crowd with tales of his time as a psychiatric nurse as found in his memoir.

Back to Lovecrumbs for Tea, Cake and Books with Sara Sheridan.

Sara gave the audience a potted history of the book, from its earliest inception to the current debated on copyright law. And there were cakes.

Once again to Inspace for the last event, a discussion on the future of Festivals.

Peggy Hughes was chairing the discussion with Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Lisa Dempster, director of Melbourne Writers Festival, on Skype and Claire Squires of Stirling University standing in at the last minute for the Wigtown Book Festival's Adrian Turpin who had been stood up by a train.

And the resident sketcher Morag, aka the Yurt Doodler, was in residence again.

After this everyone decanted to the Traverse bar for soothing drinks and cheeses. Another Festival over!

West Port Book Festival 2012: day 3

Sunday dawned grey and miserable but we barely noticed as the intimate crowd at the Forest Cafe were regaled with the story of the Itinerant Poetry Librarian; this was the first time she had told this story which was rather a coup.

The next stop was the Kingfisher, a chip shop on Bread Street. Vicki Jarrett's debut novel, Nothing is Heavy, is set partly in a chip shop so why not?

The owners had taken some persuading, it being a rather unusual request, but in the end were delighted to have a troupe of well wrapped literary fans devouring chips.

Provenance Wines was the next stop, for Peter Mackay and Niall O’Gallagher presenting Two Shades of Gaelic. Alas, Niall couldn't make it so there was just the one shade of very bawdy Gaelic poetry, nicely lubricated by some Cairn o'Mohr wines.

Back to Pulp Fiction again for a discussion on Young Adult Fiction with Keith Grey, Roy Gill and Daniela Sacerdoti, the audience proving that good YA can be just as enjoyable for adults.

And then with barely time to shuffle a few chairs around, Pippa Goldschmidt and Zoe Venditozzi came along to discuss their work.

Onto another new venue, both for the Festival and the area, Lovecrumbs. Once people were full of cake Kirsty Logan and Elaine di Rollo gave us some good chat. Kirsty discussed her love of myth and story, sharing some of her work and how it came to be.

Elaine has been researching Bleakly Hall for her second novel, a bulding better known at the moment as Napier's Craighouse campus. She gave us a glimpse into its history and some rather bizarre illustrations of the treatments they used to carry out.

Last year's Wince! at Armchair Books was a smash hit, packing the shop and going on for hours. It seemed that the cold kept the numbers down but there was no shortage of embarrassing past writings to be shared.

West Port Book Festival 2012: day 2

After a little bit of sleep day 2 arrived, starting off with Andrea Gillies in Central Library who discussed her writing and how depressingly inspirational it can be to deal with an elderly, dementia-addled relative.

Edinburgh Books played host to a joyful Gavin Francis, whose props included an inflatable penguin as well as a penguin egg.

Off to St Columba's by the Castle then, for My Favourite Place, an event with the Scottish Book Trust and part of Book Week Scotland. Every year SBT publish some sort of crowdsourced collection of stories, this year they've printed 150,000 which are being given away free all across Scotland.

There were a couple of published contributors at the event (all of the submissions are available on the website) who read their stories to the room and then answered some questions.

After which there was a literary quiz which successfully got the competitive spirit going in everyone.

While this was happening Edinburgh Books was hosting a session on book repair, guided by Orlene McIlfatrick.

After which, a quick turnaround found Wayne Price and Liam Murray Bell reading from and discussing their new novels, Furnace and So it is respectively.

Then it was off to Pulp Fiction for a chat with Nick Holdstock and Keith Ridgway, hosted by the ever-delightful Stuart Kelly.

No rest for the wicked, a quick trek down the road found Isabelle Ting talking about the five eventful years of Owl & Lion. There was a crackle of excitement when she announced that she would be open for selling things afterwards...

The next stop was another of the new venues, Inspace. Run by New Media Scotland, it's basically a big white box in the University quarter filled with shiny technological joy; it plays host to many events all year round but they make a point of not being an venue space but instead are an active collaborator for any event. They regularly show films in expanded 'Atmosphere' screenings so this promised to be interesting.

For WPBF the film was Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book, a film about words, calligraphy, sex and death. Roughly.

Behind a bamboo forest people took it in turns to read from The Pillow Book while some of the more disturbing music from the film played in the background.

One of the Inspace crew was passing among the crowd projecting Japanese characters onto people's faces, a very modern way of getting writing onto skin.

Meanwhile, hidden at the rear of the space was a bed and a body, being used for a canvas more traditionally.

Calligrapher Campbell Sandilands had stepped in at the last moment when the original ink artist had to drop out.

After a while the fun subsided and everyone sat down to watch the film.

The patient model lay there throughout the evening, with nothing but the complete works of Oscar Wilde to protect his modesty.

There was a brief intermission, during which there were more readings from the book while sake cocktails were distributed.

Finally, the film and the calligraphy were over. Not everyone had appreciated the Greenaway, but the evening as a whole went down extremely well.

West Port Book Festival 2012: day 1

In the summer of 2008 the West Port Book Festival was birthed. Originally running over a long weekend in August, to coincide with its big sister the Edinburgh International Book Festival, a series of free events were held in various venues on Edinburgh's West Port - often referred to as Edinburgh's Soho for its multitude of bookshops (and strip clubs) - using Edinburgh Books as its base.

Run almost entirely on love and cake, it has continued to attract remarkably big names to perform in bookshops, galleries, church halls, pubs and cafes, often to an audience of more people than you would think you could fit in a bookshop.

After two years in August it became more of a pop-up Festival, having been in June 2010, October 2011 and now November 2012. And the ever-changing landscape of Edinburgh's venues means that old stalwarts have died and been replaced by a raft of newbies; this year they've even added Inspace and Central Lending library as a venue, not to mention a chipshop!

This year's programme launch was in Edinburgh Books and along with the usual stars - more cake than can be eaten in one evening and beer pleasingly donated by Stewarts - there was the addition of a brass band.

This year they're working with the Rock Trust to build a reading corner for their drop in centre. So if you have any spare books you think 16-25s might appreciate you can drop them off at any of the WPBF venues...

This year's festival started off, as is traditional, with an informal pre-fest meetup; cue a round of very friendly drinks and nibbles (to fortify the team of course) in Pulp Fiction.

While this was happening, Main Point Books was taken over for the first actual event, a discussion on book covers featuring amongst others, and probably one reason for the massive turnout, Alastair Gray. So big a turnout that there wasn't even room to slip in and grab a few photos. This was followed by Take Tea with Turing, a collection of works inspired by Alan Turing compiled by Viccy Adams. Everything at Inspace is exciting.

The West Port team like to collaborate wherever possible and the last event of the night was a miniature version of Edinburgh's latest cabaret sensation Rally & Broad, aka Rachel McCrum and Jenny Lindsay.

The downstairs bar in the Cuckoo's Nest was about as full as it could be, which made every visit to the toilet by customers upstairs - who had to wade through the masses - thoroughly entertaining.

We were treated to an excellent if somewhat harrowing poem/story by the illustrious Hannah McGill.

Followed by the inexplicable and entertaining musical trippings of Liz Cronin (whose refraim "I'll be a killing machine in the name of justice", led to some terrified looks on the men trying to sneak out of the toilets).

Then the show was tied off by a set of very dramatic poetry from Luke Wright, who alliterated us to bits while absentmindedly being the best dressed person in the building.

And then there was much collapsing and a brief sleep before the events of Saturday...