The Edinburgh World Writers' Conference this summer will reinvent the massively influential writers' summit for a global audience
The Edinburgh writers' conference of 1962: Norman Mailer and Henry Miller at one of the discussions. Photograph: Erich Auerbach/Getty Images
The hugely influential 1962 Edinburgh writers' conference, where Norman Mailer and William S Burroughs locked horns with local writers, and where Hugh MacDiarmid infamously denounced Alexander Trocchi as "cosmopolitan scum", is set to be replicated in an event this summer.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival and the British Council are teaming up to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1962 event, with 50 major international and Scottish authors coming together to debate the relevance of literature today and to attempt to build what organisers said would be "the most complete picture of writing and its relationship to modern life ever attempted". The modern incarnation of the 1962 event, which will take place in August, will be broadcast simultaneously online around the world.
"Half a century ago Edinburgh hosted a writers' conference that was so influential it helped bring about the explosion of literary festivals as we know them today. Norman Mailer, Rosamond Lehmann and William S Burroughs were among the international authors who locked horns with celebrated Scottish writers in 1962, when over a five-day period 50 authors met to discuss how writing can help make sense of the world," said Nick Barley, director of the EIBF. "It turned into an extraordinary stand-off between the old guard and the young turks, as each day a different topic was debated, from the future of the novel to if literature should be politicised. These relatively general topics prompted fierce and passionate debate, and it struck me that we could legitimately ask if these topics were still relevant today."
Full piece at The Guardian.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival and the British Council are teaming up to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1962 event, with 50 major international and Scottish authors coming together to debate the relevance of literature today and to attempt to build what organisers said would be "the most complete picture of writing and its relationship to modern life ever attempted". The modern incarnation of the 1962 event, which will take place in August, will be broadcast simultaneously online around the world.
"Half a century ago Edinburgh hosted a writers' conference that was so influential it helped bring about the explosion of literary festivals as we know them today. Norman Mailer, Rosamond Lehmann and William S Burroughs were among the international authors who locked horns with celebrated Scottish writers in 1962, when over a five-day period 50 authors met to discuss how writing can help make sense of the world," said Nick Barley, director of the EIBF. "It turned into an extraordinary stand-off between the old guard and the young turks, as each day a different topic was debated, from the future of the novel to if literature should be politicised. These relatively general topics prompted fierce and passionate debate, and it struck me that we could legitimately ask if these topics were still relevant today."
Full piece at The Guardian.
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