Inside Author Alisha Fernandez Miranda’s Visit to the Edinburgh Book Festival
I was with my people—book people
By Alisha Fernandez Miranda
August in Edinburgh is the most wonderful time of the year. Millions of people from around the world descend upon the city like a friendly plague of locusts (if locusts were into watching stand-up, contortionists, avant-garde musicals, and reading great books) for the festivals––yes, that’s plural. Throughout the month, the city is alive with festivals, but I was only there for one––the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
I jostled for space on the bus alongside a merry crowd of festival-goers heading up the hill from New Town to Old Town. At the gates, we were greeted by street performers, tourists failing to correctly pronounce Scottish names, desperate magicians handing out flyers, and the dulcet tones of bagpipes. It required maximal restraint to avoid a hostile encounter with everyone around me. Perhaps they too were battling with a fierce hangover, a fading temporary tattoo, and a raging internal battle about whether they should have stayed in bed.
After the world went online during Covid, the incentive to attend in-person events has certainly waned. Most of the talks at the Book Festival were live-streamed or made available to watch afterward. I remember thinking that I could have been in my sweatpants on my sofa with a Kit Kat, streaming Sara Pascoe’s (author of Sex Power Money and Weirdo) discussion on my television instead. But, as soon as I entered the Edinburgh College of Art’s bustling quad where the festival was headquartered, I started to feel better.
I was with my people. Book people.
Book festivals are about connection: fellow readers, authors, staff, and volunteers. Social media has shrunk the figurative space between writers and their readers. So, there’s nothing like feeling butterflies in your stomach when you’re in line, one person away from getting your book signed by a writer whose story made you feel something extraordinary.
That was how I felt when I got the chance to ask Rebecca F. Kuang, author of the buzzed-about Yellowface and Babel, a question. Standing in front of Kuang, my pulse raced as I raised my hand, taking the mic from a volunteer. I wanted Kuang’s opinion on how to approach a translated reading. Before reading Babel, I never considered the mark a translator leaves on a title or the impact their decisions have on my own reading experience. In a bright red dress, Kuang met my question with an even brighter smile, “Every writer should try reading in a different language to better hone their craft,” she said.
It was hard to hear her over the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.
She asked us to consider how the concept of time is approached differently in English than in Mandarin, or how grammar referring to the past, present, and future vary across countries. “If something as basic as time and space can be dissimilar in different languages,” she said, “imagine what else you could learn by reading [books translated from] another language.”
Book festivals are about connection: fellow readers, authors, staff, and volunteers.
Beyond the one-on-one interviews, the Book Festival did a phenomenal job of bringing distinct voices together on panels, allowing the audience to not only connect with authors but watch as they connected with each other durings sessions like “Funny/Peculiar.”
Three hilarious authors joined the stage: Josie Long, author of the short story collection Because I Don’t Know What You Mean and What You Don’t, New Yorker cartoonist Will McPhail, and Monica Heisey (whose book, Really Good Actually, has been one of my top reads of the year). After the panel, Heisey told me that the three of them were friends and had already read each other’s books, so their prep for their panel mainly consisted of “goofing around in the author’s Yurt.” That comfort translated to the stage where their “goofing around” kept the entire audience laughing. For one hour, everyone in the room was in on the joke.
Jokes aside, the serious topics became in-person, communal therapy sessions––something you just don’t get from a screen. One Monday morning, I was part of a group of about twenty-five women gathered to watch Christie Watson, author of Quilt on Fire, have a conversation with Sam Baker about midlife and menopause. Heads bobbed in agreement across the group who loudly applauded Watson’s statement, “I was feeling like everyone else was getting it right,” and Baker’s, “The mental health symptoms [of menopause] are the most debilitating.” The two also offered helpful suggestions on where to get the best varifocals. I didn’t know either Watson or Baker before the festival, but in that room, I felt like I shared something meaningful with them.
I also spent time with Professor Devi Sridhar, author of Preventable, and Dr. Gavin Francis who wrote Free for All: Why the NHS Is Worth Saving. Sridhar, a fellow Miamian, is a household name in Scotland. As a lead advisor to the Scottish Government during Covid, she was our Fauci. Francis, a general practitioner and passionate advocate for investing in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, had a stark view of healthcare within a crumbling system. The room was packed with several hundred people still processing––and in some cases mourning––their trauma from the pandemic. A woman next to me teared up as Sridhar said of Covid-19, “We saw glimmers of the possibilities of science, but also of humanity.”
Attending book festivals in person may not be accessible to everyone. But, if you have the opportunity to spend time at a place where people are brought together by their joy, sadness, and pure love for the written word, then I could not recommend it highly enough.
On the first day of the festival, I leaped at the chance to meet with a fan who had travelled all the way from Atlanta to Edinburgh for the Book Festival. Ronnesha reached out to me on Instagram a few weeks prior asking if I could sign her copy of My What If Year. Since my book isn’t out in the U.K. yet, it was my only chance to say I signed a book at the Edinburgh Book Festival (this year, at least!).
Over coffee, Ronnesha told me she made the journey over the Atlantic on her own. Coming to Edinburgh for the festival was a trip on her bucket list. Last year, Ronnesha had it on her vision board. A literature lover, she loaded up her schedule with events featuring Colson Whitehead, Eleanor Catton, and Bonnie Garmus. She said the feeling of attending the festival in person was amazing—the beginning of many more “what ifs.”
Meeting Ronnesha was the only hangover cure I needed. It was a reminder of why I pounded Advil, put on a bra, and left the comfort of my duvet for the experience. The Edinburgh Book Festival was about building community, placing the magic that happens between the page of a book and my brain into the real world, and using it to connect with others.
I’ve already signed up for my next book festival. See you in Miami in November––I’ll be the one with a cocktail in hand.
Alisha Fernandez Miranda is the award-winning author of My What If Year, which was released in February 2023. Detailing her year of unpaid internships in the dream jobs of her childhood, the book follows Alisha on her quest to figure out what might have happened if her life had taken a different path. Alisha has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and on local news stations across the U.S. My What If Year has been featured in Marie Claire and was chosen as a Best New Book by People Magazine and the Boston Globe.