Scottish Books Events: August 2025

Another year, another August. If the noise of the Fringe and all the other festivals becomes a bit much and you just want to curl up in a corner with a good book (event) then you’re in luck, because there’s a whole host of bookish performances, launches and activities across Scotland to keep you occupied. Over in Glasgow, Govanhill International Festival (1-10 Aug) hosts a mini book festival, with appearances from Chris McQueer in conversation with Peter Mohan (9 Aug), winner of the 2023 Nan Shepherd Prize Alycia Pirmohamed speaking about her poetry career (9 Aug), and a programme of Palestinian authors including Deline Abushaban, Dareen Tartour and Mohamed Mousa (9 Aug).

Across the central belt, meanwhile, are the proverbial elephants in the big book tent. Edinburgh International Book Festival’s 2025 edition, running 9-24 August, is themed around Repair, exploring how everything is broken (lol) and how we might go about fixing it. Big names include Maggie O’Farrell (15 Aug), Ta-Nehisi Coates (16 Aug), R. F. Kuang (24 Aug) and Ian McEwan (24 Aug) appearing at McEwan Hall as part of their The Front List strand. Other highlights from the festival include Nussaibah Younis discussing her Women’s Prize for Fiction-nominated Fundamentally (13 Aug), four poets Pratyusha, Alycia Pirmohamed, Jessica J Lee and Nina Mingya Powles exploring experimental forms of poetry and publishing (23 Aug), a showcase of work by queer Scottish writers including Ely Percy and Shola von Rheinhold in support of Fierce Salvage: A Queer Words Anthology (15 Aug), and Heather Parry and Nell Stevens talking all things Gothic and grotesque (14 Aug).

For a more indie take on the publishing scene, Book Fringe is back, baby. Three Edinburgh indie bookshops – Lighthouse Bookshop, Argonaut Books and Typewronger books – team up for the crossover event of the year, with a range of free bookish events throughout the month that you can drop in on from 3-26 August. The full programme has yet to be announced, but some sneak peek highlights include an event with queer Nigerian writer Eloghosa Osunde (5 Aug), Joel White and Laura C Foster on their Pluto Press book Friends in Common on the politics of radical friendship (13 Aug), and Dayna Ash and Yasmine Rifaii on I Will Always Be Looking For You: A Queer Anthology on Arab Art (19 Aug). There’s more incredible Arab writing over at Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine too, which runs 12-15 August: there’s poetry from Dareen Tatour and the Gaza Poets Society (12 Aug), and a storytelling session on food and literature led by Scotland-based Gazan storyteller Diline Abushaban (15 Aug).

And away from the festival scene in Glasgow, Eloghosa Osunde also appears at Waterstones Argyle Street to launch Necessary Fiction on 5 August and R. F. Kuang launches her latest novel Katabasis there too on 26 August. Over at Glasgow Women’s Library, there’s a workshop exploring life writing on 28 August, and there’s a Glasgow Storytellers Group at Glasgow Zine Library, where people can share works-in-progress and chat (4 Aug).