Radical Book Fair 2024 Program Launch

Please note that the voucher ticket for this event is valid against any of the books featured at this year's Radical Book Fair. The voucher will be redeemable against a book or a pre-order once the program has been announced. The value of the donation ticket is a donation in its entirety and will go toward supporting the Radical Book Fair and keeping it accessible for everyone.

The Edinburgh Radical Book Fair is taking pace 21st-24th November at the Assembly Roxy and we'd love you to join us for the programme launch!

The theme for this year's fair will be From Where We Stand.

With a nod to the thirty years of a radical bookshop existing on West Nicolson Street, we'll be celebrating the way histories of resistance, protest and change-making live on in every step we take toward a more just future.. Sometimes it's not only about making new worlds - it's also about building from the worlds that have wilfully been buried through history, but which we all depend on.

The full program will be announced on October 12th - on none other than Bookshop Day - and we invite you to welcome it into the world at with us! Join us to hear all about this year's panels, workshops, stalls and discussions, and to get your hands on a physical program, all while enjoying performances from the wonderful writers listed below!

TICKETS: If you're able to, this is also an opportunity to, support the book fair and make sure it stays accessible to as many as possible. The Radical Book Fair is almost entirely bookshop run, without outside funding, so any and all support means the world to us. The Fair is FREE to BROWSE Thursday - Sunday and you can drop in whenever we are open, By making a £10 donation (below) you can cover the cost of two people's tickets to a book fair event.

This year's marvellously empowering book fair poster is an original design by the inimitable Lindsay Grime.

Our launch performers include Olivia Calderón Duff as well as:

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 is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics.

Anthony V. Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Currently, Writer in Residence and Professor at the University of York, their interests include silence, plurilingualism, place, memory, and traditional masquerade. Capildeo's ninth full-length book, Polkadot Wounds (Carcanet, 2024), had its in-person launch at the ALT book fringe in Edinburgh. This book was inspired partly a residency with the Charles Causley Trust in Launceston, Cornwall. Capildeo contributes a regular report to PN Review and has served as a judge or selector for awards including the Forward Prizes and the Jhalak Prize. They support Fossil Free Books' call for book workers to organize for a genocide-free, fossil fuel-free book industry..

Andrés N. Ordorica is a queer Latinx writer based in Edinburgh. Drawing on his family’s immigrant history and third culture upbringing, his writing maps the journey of diaspora and unpacks what it means to be from ni de aquí, ni de allá (neither here, nor there). He is the author of the poetry collection At Least This I Know and novel How We Named the Stars. He has been shortlisted for the Kavya Prize, Morley Lit Prize, the Mo Siewcharran Prize and the Saltire Society’s Poetry Book of The Year. In 2024, he was selected as one of The Observer’s 10 Best Debut Novelists.

Lakshmi Ajay is a visual artist, writer and social worker, living in Edinburgh. She has performed at the Feminist Cabaret at the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair in November 2023, and is currently a writer-in-residence at ECHO, the editorial platform of Take One Action Film Festival. Her art has been exhibited at Blunt Knife Co. and she is part of the 2024-2025 artist development programme 'Emerging Strategies' run by Embassy Gallery. She was also a resident at a writing salon curated by Lola Olufemi. Her work is inspired by her experiences of migration, finding pockets of community along the way and dreaming of abolitionist futures. She creates art in the hope that they lead to enduring spaces of care, connection and revolution.

Naomi Head (she/her) is a writer, poet, and creative facilitator based in Edinburgh. Her work explores themes of community, belonging, mental health, grief, anger, and hope. Naomi's work has been published locally and internationally by SNACK Mag, Edinburgh Literary Salon, Beyond the Veil Press, Sunday Mornings at the River, and more. Her poetry zine Kitchen Love was released in November 2023 and printed by Typewronger Riso Studio with illustrations by Hana Khan. Naomi also hosts monthly creative writing group The Chicken Coop Writing Group in Leith. You can find out more about Naomi's work by connecting with her on Instagram @naomieah_