The week in Charlotte Square

As the International Book Festival got going on a rainy Sunday, the West Port Book Festival was just winding to a close after a successful second year. The free programme of events were all complete sellouts, having attracted a devoted audience of aficionados. The characterful bookshops of the West Port (the inspiration for Black Books) and the trendy Tea Tree Cafe hosted an array of talented poets. Just as importantly, the festival saw a blurring of barriers between writers and audience, with proceedings benefitting from the venues' community feel and a real commitment to fostering debate.

Meanwhile, over at the Word Power book festival, Palestinian human rights lawyer and activist Raja Shehadeh reflected on the power of literature as a denunciatory voice as he discussed his memoir of his father's assassination, and his twenty-year quest to discover the killer's identity.

Things finally got under way over at Charlotte Square on the 15th. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, author of literary thrillers in the vein of Umberto Eco, defended himself against a sceptical audience, who were uneasy at this writer's staggering commercial success. In a lighthearted talk, the engaging Spaniard expounded upon the intricate art of storytelling, arguing that "every book deserves respect because every book has a reader".

Later on, Garrison Keillor's talk—an extract of which is printed exclusively in Fest—was a delight for fans of this laconic Minnesotan's fiction: he filled his hour with a tale of Lake Wobegon which culminated in a hot-air balloon's calamitous collision with a naked man above a ship-board wedding. The story was interrupted only by his occasional attempts to befuddle his stoical BSL interpreter with snatches of song and obscure vocab.

Carol Ann Duffy made the first of several appearances at As well as revisiting a selection of poems from a varied lifetime of work, she recited her first poems written as Britain's first female poet laureate. Last Post, written to commemorate Harry Patch, the last British survivor of the first world war, was accompanied by a trumpet - fitting enough, even though the music occasionally drowned out the words.

A successful first day was rounded off with an inspiring appearance by Sudanese ex-child soldier and rapper Emmanuel Jal. To say that his story was harrowing would be a grotesque understatement. One story - about he and his companions used a friend's body, loaded with explosives, as bait for hyenas, fittingly ended with a communal jump among the audience as the firework display for the Edinburgh tattoo began. Most moving was Jal's easy charm and infectious sense of joy - a contrast to the stunned solemnity of his audience. The evening closed emotionally: while Jal sang "Emma", a tribute to the aid worker who rescued him, the audience danced at his command – not awkwardly, but in willing response to his charisma. How many other writers could possibly get the Charlotte Square crowd dancing this August? [Lee Bunce, Char