I’m at two events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year:
- 15 August, 12:00 – Shani Akilah & Jeda Pearl: Celebrating Andrea Levy
- 17 August, 17:00 – Disrupting the Narrative – A Performance
Scroll down for full details…
Shani Akilah & Jeda Pearl: Celebrating Andrea Levy
Fri 15 August, 12:00 – 13:00
Venue B
Access: Captioned, wheelchair accessible, quiet room
£15.50 / £10.50 Book Tickets
I’m looking forward to sharing the impact Andrea Levy’s novels have had on my writing (and reading)!
“Join writers Shani Akilah and Jeda Pearl as they celebrate the enduring legacy of Andrea Levy. Through her powerful novels – most famously the multi-award-winning Small Island – Levy illuminated the experiences of the Windrush generation and explored themes of identity, belonging, and historical injustice. This event, held in partnership with the Andrea Levy Scholarship, honours Levy’s vital contribution to British literature and her continued influence and impact on a new generation of writers. Chaired by Lisa Williams.”
About the authors
Shani Akilah is a Black British Caribbean writer and screenwriter from South London. She is a book influencer, served as a literary judge for the Nota Bene Prize in 2023, and holds a Master’s degree in African Studies from the University of Oxford. Passionate about bringing people together, Shani co-founded the Nyah Network, a book club for Black women, and The Orange Room Collective which celebrates Black British creatives in London. In recognition of her contributions to literature and community, the Shani Akilah Library opened in October 2024 in Woolwich. Her debut book, For Such a Time as This, won Best Short Story Collection at the 2024 Cosmopolitan Book Awards.
Jeda Pearl is a Scottish Jamaican author based in Edinburgh, Scotland. As a poet, Jeda was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Jerwood Poetry Award 2024, and in 2022, shortlisted for the Sky Arts RSL Award and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize. As a fiction author, Jeda’s stories have been longlisted by the British Science Fiction Association Awards (2024), published in Peepal Tree Press’ first anthology of Black British speculative fiction, and in 2019, awarded Cove Park’s Scottish Emerging Writer Residency and shortlisted for the Moniack Mhor Bridge Awards. Her poems and stories appear in art installations and several anthologies, and her debut poetry collection, Time Cleaves Itself, is published by Peepal Tree Press.
Lisa Williams is a Caribbean British author and cultural practitioner, and founder of Black History Walking Tours Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Caribbean Association. She curates a range of arts events across Scotland to promote Caribbean culture and facilitates educational, creative and anti-racist programmes. Lisa has an MA in Arts, Festival and Cultural Management and is an Honorary Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh; is a Steering Group member of Empire, Slavery & Scotland’s Museums; and Advisory Board member of V&A Dundee. Her debut children’s book, The Big Book of UK History, is published by Penguin.
Disrupting the Narrative – A Performance
Sun 17 August, 17:00 – 18:00
Spiegeltent
Access: Captioned, wheelchair accessible, quiet room
£15.50 / £10.50 Book tickets
“Do you think you know Edinburgh? What about the parts of its story it prefers to conceal? This theatrical poetry performance from Edinburgh’s former Makar Hannah Lavery alongside fellow poets Jeda Pearl, Shasta Hanif Ali, Niall Moorjani, and Alycia Pirmohamed, illuminates the hidden history of the city, its institutions, and its people. Set to music by composer Niroshini Thambar, and featuring evocative images from photographer Kat Gollock, your understanding of Edinburgh will be changed forever by this special event. Originally commissioned by Push the Boat Out, with support from Edinburgh 900.”
About the authors & artists
Hannah Lavery is a poet and playwright from Edinburgh. Her debut poetry collection Blood Salt Spring (Polygon) was nominated for a Saltire Prize in 2022, her second collection Unwritten Woman was published by Polygon in August 2024. Hannah is the former Makar (poet laureate) for the City of Edinburgh, co-host of feminist arts podcast QuineCast and was an Associate Artist at National Theatre Scotland (NTS) her plays for NTS The Drift and Lament for Sheku Bayoh and The Protest have toured extensively. She has written for a wide range of Theatre companies, broadcasters and publications including BBC Radio 4 and the Guardian. Hannah lives, breathes and dreams on the beaches and cliffs of Scotland’s East Coast, with her dreaming often taking her back to the streets and closes of Edinburgh.
Jeda Pearl is a Scottish Jamaican author based in Edinburgh, Scotland. As a poet, Jeda was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Jerwood Poetry Award 2024, and in 2022, shortlisted for the Sky Arts RSL Award and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize. As a fiction author, Jeda’s stories have been longlisted by the British Science Fiction Association Awards (2024), published in Peepal Tree Press’ first anthology of Black British speculative fiction, and in 2019, awarded Cove Park’s Scottish Emerging Writer Residency and shortlisted for the Moniack Mhor Bridge Awards. Her poems and stories appear in art installations and several anthologies, and her debut poetry collection, Time Cleaves Itself, is published by Peepal Tree Press.
Shasta Hanif Ali is a writer and poet. Her writing delicately navigates the legacy of race and heritage; where themes of memory and language interlace and disrupt. Shasta’s writing has been published in the Association for Scottish Literature, Federation of Writers Scotland, Sidhe Press among others. Shasta is a winner of the 2024 Candlestick Press Light Poems competition. Recently Shasta was nominated as one of Edinburgh’s 100 trail blazing women past and present, and honoured in a mural which exhibited across Edinburgh.
Niall Moorjani is a non-binary, neurodiverse, Scottish-Indian writer and storyteller based between London and Edinburgh. They write for both children and adults, but at the core of all their work are themes of hope, joy and kindness. Niall has performed at festivals and events all over the world, to audiences in packed theatres, empty libraries, confused bus groups, random passers by and to their dogs. As an adult storyteller Niall’s shows Mohan: A Partition Story and A Fairie Tale both received five star reviews and enjoyed successful UK tours. For children Niall created the original version of the Edinburgh Fringe 2023 smash hit sell out show Grow and co-created the upscaled version with the Suitcase Storytelling Company for the Southbank Centre’s ‘Imagine Festival’. They also co-created the award winning Girl And the Dragon (Suitcase Storytelling Company) and have toured across multiple festivals as a children’s storyteller and writer, highlights include, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Hay on Wye Festival and the Cheltenham book festival. Their debut picture book Rajiv’s Starry Feelings was released in 2023 with Lantana.
Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the poetry collection Another Way to Split Water (Polygon Books and YesYes Books). Her nonfiction debut A Beautiful and Vital Place won the 2023 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and is forthcoming with Canongate. Alycia currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s at the University of Cambridge. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics, and the recipient of several awards including a Pushcart Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.
Niroshini Thambar is a musician, composer, and sound designer. Initially performing live on violin and keyboards, she moved into composition and audio production. Her work spans theatre, installation, film, and participatory art projects. Her creative research interests encompass, ecology, identity and belonging. Theatre credits include Snake in the Grass (Dundee Rep) So Young (Traverse Theatre/Citizens Theatre/Raw Material), The Brenda Line (Pitlochry Festival Theatre) Sho and the Demons of the Deep (National Theatre of Scotland/IAP), Disciples (Stellar Quines), Cyprus Avenue (Tron Theatre), To the Bone (Pitlochry Festival Theatre), Jinnistan (Play Pie Pint), Little Women (Pitlochry Festival Theatre/Watford Palace Theatre), The Bookies (Dundee Rep), Here (Curious Monkey/Northern Stage), Scent of Roses (Royal Lyceum Edinburgh), The Tempest (Tron Theatre), Ghosts (National Theatre of Scotland), Gagarin Way (Dundee Rep). Further work includes Associate Director for the audio-led drama Niqabi Ninja (Independent Arts Projects /EIF) and Series Composer for United Kingdoms (Naked Productions/BBC Radio 4).
Kat Gollock is an Edinburgh based photographer who, as well as working commercially, is a teacher of photography, an exhibited photographic artist, and a published writer on the subject. She is also co-director of AGITATE, an Edinburgh based artist-run start-up which, through their photography gallery, bookshop, and events programme celebrates pictures in all their forms. Using walking as a starting point, her personal photographic work focuses predominantly on landscape, often incorporating text to complement and enhance her images. Kat takes inspiration from the stories and lived experiences of herself, those she walks with, and the narratives held within and of the landscape. The work she makes is an exploration into our place in the world, the landscape itself and the spaces we inhabit both physically and emotionally.
