By Sophie Dickinson
SYP South West Summer Book Club – Emily Henry’s Beach Read
7 August, 7:00 p.m.
Join the South West branch of the Society of Young Publishers on Zoom for a casual, summer-themed book club meeting on Emily Henry’s Beach Read. The event will offer the opportunity to chat about the book and meet other publishing hopefuls in a relaxed environment. For more information and tickets, click here.
BookTok Festival at Waterstones Piccadilly
4 August, 11:00 a.m. onwards
Waterstones Piccadilly is hosting a one day BookTok festival, the first of its kind, offering the chance for the virtual book sphere to meet in real life and celebrate the growing phenomenon of BookTok! Join them for exclusive quizzes, merch giveaways, photo booth opportunities and craft and embroidery workshops – all of which are free to attend! For more information and tickets, click here.
In the afternoon, bookish activities continue with The Candid Bookclub, who are hosting a book club to discuss Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis. Tickets for this section of the BookTok festival are available here.
At 6:00 p.m., there will be an exclusive livestream with Taylor Jenkins Reid, to celebrate the success of her widely read novels The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising and Daisy Jones and The Six. For more information and tickets, click here.
Danielle Jawando in conversation with Liz Flanagan
16 August, 6:30–8:30 p.m.
Join Danielle Jawando and Liza Flanagan at Blackwells Manchester for a conversation about Jawando’s new YA novel When Our Worlds Collided. This powerful coming of age story covers chance encounters, injustice and how the choices we make can completely alter our future.
Danielle Jawando is an author and screenwriter, and her YA novel And the Stars Were Burning Brightly won the best senior novel in the Great Reads Award, as well as being shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, among others. Liza Flanagan is an author and lecturer in creative writing at York St John University. Her debut YA novel Eden Summer was published by David Fickling Books and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. She is currently writing a historical novel for adults. For more information and tickets, click here.
Laura Kay, Lily Lindon and Bethany Rutter in conversation with Kiley Dunbar
11 August, 6:30–8:30 p.m.
Join Blackwells Manchester in welcoming Laura Kay, Lily Lindon and Bethany Rutter to discuss their latest works Tell Me Everything, Double Booked and Welcome to Your Life – three brilliant new laugh-out-loud romantic comedies. They will be in conversation with host Kiley Dunbar, author of The Borrow a Bookshop Holiday.
For more information on the speakers and their books, as well as ticket information and prices, click here.
Mohsin Hamid: The Last White Man
9 August, 7:00 p.m.
London Review Bookshop
Join Mohsin Hamid at the London Review Bookshop as he discusses his fifth novel The Last White Man (Hamish Hamilton). This continues his exploration of cultural and racial displacement, commenced in his previous novels Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Exit West. In The Last White Man, a man awakes one morning to find his skin has turned dark. Described as a contemporary remoulding of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, this is not one to miss. For more information and tickets, click here.
Edinburgh International Book Festival
13–29 August
The Edinburgh International Book Festival brings together key thinkers, authors, performers and musicians from around the world, this year boasting a programme of more than 600 events across the festival. This year's vibrant programme builds upon the hybrid format of previous years, with many events available to livestream or watch online at a later date.
Of particular interest to those in the book trade is this year’s Business of Books strand of the festival, operating on a pay what you can basis. The Business of Books offers six events, ranging from industry issues to showcases of literary talent. Attendees can expect talks on celebrating literary inclusion and the evolution of YA literature, as well as marketing strategies and advice on writing for children. The ‘Business of Books’ aims to champion, inspire, inform and demystify publishing – a brilliant event for all publishing hopefuls! For more information, visit the festival website here.
An Evening with Michael Pedersen and Omar Musa
9 August, 6:30–8:30 p.m.
Join Michael Pedersen and Omar Musa at Waterstones Nottingham as they launch their hotly anticipated and critically acclaimed new works Boy Friends and Killernova. Pedersen’s Boy Friends is an intimate yet expansive work of prose on grief, love and loss, which started out as a letter to one of Pedersen’s close friends who passed away. Musa’s Killernova is a blistering work of poetry interrogating the themes of heritage and belonging. Join the two as they talk about love, belonging, and the act of writing poetry. For more information and tickets, click here.