World’s Largest Literary Festival in Full Swing

The Edinburgh International Literary Festival got underway this morning. This is, arguably, the largest, most important festival of its type in the world and The Guardian is in place to cover the two weeks of literary shenanigans. From The Guardian’s book blog:

It's the Guardian's first year sponsoring the festival, so all is new and thrilling for us - and, perhaps, for you too. Over the next two weeks (the EIBF runs until August 28th, making it the world's biggest books festival) we'll be keeping everyone who can't make it there this year up to speed with what's going on. What we're going to try to do with our coverage is step out of the way as much as possible, and just give you the sense of what it's like to be here; to that end, we'll have daily video interviews with festival authors (as well as longer films once a week; the first, a tour of Edinburgh with Alexander McCall Smith, will be up on Monday), twice-weekly editions of the books podcast on Mondays and Fridays, and live chats with festival authors from Jasper Fforde to Maggie O'Farrell.

This years author line-up includes Alberto Manguel, David Almond, Amy Bloom, Denise Mina, Roddy Doyle, Val McDermid, Michel Faber, Johanna Skibsrud and many others. The festival runs until the 29th of August.

All of the action is rounded up by The Guardian here. The Festival’s official web site is here.