Scottish Books Events: November 2025
Two big festivals – Push the Boat Out and Edinburgh's Radical Book Fair – return to Edinburgh this month. Elsewhere, there's book launches at Porty and Glasgow
Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair returns to Assembly Roxy from 5-9 November, with a host of panels, workshops and tables upon tables of books, all themed around Environments of Change. There’s a myths and legends cabaret with Nikita Gill, Mara Gold and Niall Moorjani, a full moon reading on how to alchemise grief and transformation with Sophia Hembeck and Fariha Róisín, and a panel on music, politics and power with Dave Randall, DJ Paulette, Adele Oliver and JJ Fadaka amongst much more.
Elsewhere, over at The Portobello Bookshop, Olga Ravn launches The Wax Child on 6 November and Ella Risbridger launches In Love With Love on 11 November. Over at Lighthouse Bookshop, there’s a fundraiser for Palestine with Readers and Writers Against Genocide (26 Nov). And of course, November sees the return of Push the Boat Out, Edinburgh’s international poetry festival (20-23 Nov), with events from the likes of Iona Lee, Marjorie Lotfi, Michael Pedersen and more.
Over in Glasgow, there’s a poetry open mic at Glasgow Zine Library (12 Nov), and a new workshop called Dissent Rover / composing a poetics of dissent (7 Nov). Helena Fornells Nadal launches her poetry pamphlet in Burning House Books (7 Nov), and Ben Pester and Rose Ruane discuss Pester’s debut novel The Expansion Project at Mount Florida Books on 6 November.