West Port Book Festival

The Westport Book Festival is delicious, in as far as a non-​culinary festival can be delicious. It takes place every June, around the end of the month in the area sandwiched between Grassmarket and the Pubic Triangle (where they kind of overlap), that houses an amazing collection of second-​hand bookshops.
It is, in a nutshell, the second hand bookshop’s response to the overly glamorous Edinburgh International Book Festival. How? It’s free. It’s intimate. And it has a sense of humour. When speaking to Colin Fraser, the festival social media guy, he told me about how he wanted to have events held, not only in the bookshops in the area, but in Edinburgh infamous Burke & Hare strip club. I’d totally attend. Would you?

Just minutes away from the Grassmarket, in an area often dubbed the ‘pubic triangle’ due to the abundance of lap dancing clubs there, is Edinburgh’s secret book district, the West Port, where shops full of fascinating and various aged tomes can be found.
I love this part of town all year round, but especially at the end of June when it plays host to the West Port Book Festival, an awesome literary event that still has something of an underground feel.
Providing a real contrast to the slickly commercial International Book Festival in August, this independent festival gives you the opportunity to experience local writers speaking about their work at close quarters. Most of the events take place in the West Port bookshops where audiences cram into tiny spaces, sitting on rickety stools or perching on a book ladder while listening to some Jamaican poetry, say, or a talk about Ancient Greece.
The programme is pretty varied, and best of all, every event is free, so there’s no excuse not to wander down to the West Port and perhaps discover something new.