The irony in the Kurdish situation, asserts Thomas Schmidinger, is that they only attract our attention by virtue of their enemies. When so-called Islamic State (IS) reached its threatening peak in 2014, it seemed that the Kurds were the only force capable of stopping them. As Syria’s miserable and messy civil war enters its 7th […]
On Wednesday evening I had the pleasure of attending an event so understated, and yet so powerfully moving that it will be a long time before I forget it. Entering the slightly cramped, but cosy and welcoming atmosphere in Lighthouse Bookshop, I was initially struck by the people in the audience. Many were poets themselves, […]
It is not uncommon to encounter an event in Edinburgh during which topics of love, sexuality and desire are explored and challenged. However, amongst the sea of events in which the politics of sexuality and desire take centre stage, Lighthouse Bookshop’s celebration of Michael Amherst’s Go the Way Your Blood Beats was quietly yet triumphantly […]
With a theme as broad as ‘Nourish’, Book Week Scotland has hosted a number of events marking the intersection between food and literature. Nestled within the programme Lighthouse Bookstore’s typically unconventional event, hosting Kayleigh Garthwaite as she discussed her book Hunger Pains: Life Inside Foodbank Britain. To an intimate audience, Garthwaite explained the rigorous process […]
To celebrate Book Week Scotland’s theme of ‘Nourish’ drawing to a close, the Lighthouse Bookshop opened its doors for the ‘Soul Food Café’, seeing Kate Young and Kevin MacNeil discuss food, life and literature. Revealing the inspiration behind their books (Young’s The Little Library Cookbook and MacNeil’s The Diary of Archie the Alpaca), the writers shared […]
“I believe the meaning of life is other people”, claims Shami Chakrabarti upon launching the Radical Book Fair with her talk ‘On Women’ to a sold-out audience on 16 November. Such a statement would, from the average person, run the risk of sounding like a vapid cliche, but Chakrabarti – former director of Liberty, a […]