SH ONA MUNRO (1991–1995)

Trying to choose memorable moments from numerous events is almost impossible; there are just too many. Typically it’s often the things that went wrong that rush to mind: last-minute cancellations, being stuck in a lift with Anthony Burgess, power cuts, walking round the square to calm nervy authors, and the all-time heart-stopper for our steadfast band of interviewers when authors changed their mind about what they were going to talk about just as they approached the theatre door. Fortunately those occurrences (particularly the last one) were infrequent but memorable nevertheless.

Gratifyingly, EIBF audiences were very loyal and mostly very understanding in extremis. Bringing writers and readers together was the main aim and that couldn’t have happened year on year without the extraordinary, above-and-beyond efforts of the staff teams, support of publishers and sponsors, and interest from journalists and media.

So many of the most successful authors of the day agreed to come, sometimes from afar, some closer to home, and several became Festival stalwarts over the years. Listing highlights is of course dreadfully invidious, but here, like a random bookshelf, is a shortened selection including some who were then just emerging writers (for it was many years ago): Carol Shields, Simon Armitage, Angela Carter, Peter Carey, William McIlvanney, Vivian French, Eric Newby, Jessie Kesson, Anthony Burgess (once we got out the lift), Margaret Forster, Janice Galloway, Douglas Adams, Jackie Kay, Alan Bennett, Shena Mackay, Norman MacCaig, Debi Gliori, Ian Rankin, Joyce Carol Oates, Mario Vargas Llosa, Val McDermid, Milorad Pavić, Edwin Morgan, Colin Thubron, Doris Lessing, Jonathan Coe, Maya Angelou, James Kelman, Hilary Mantel, Ben Okri, Liz Lochhead, Jack Mapanje, Candia McWilliam, Edna O’Brien, Michael Ondaatje, Anne Fine, Alasdair Gray, Alan Warner, Bernard MacLaverty, Jacqueline Wilson, Ali Smith, Lemn Sissay, Kate Grenville, Walter Mosley. What a feast, what an honour.

NI C K BARLEY (2009–2023) PAYS TRIBUTE TO JAN FAIRLEY (1995–1997)

Festivals are like sourdough starter cultures. They allow good discourse to flourish, and that healthy culture in turn nourishes new growth. Jan Fairley, a director who brought a distinctly Latin American flavour to Edinburgh’s literary life, did as much as anyone to cultivate the rich mix that made the Book Festival what it is today.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Jan but she had an impressive track record before her appointment as director late in 1995. She had lived in (and fled from) Chile during times of revolution, and had built an impressive reputation as a musicologist and journalist with an unusually international outlook. By all accounts, Jan brought passion and fierce humanity to her work with the festival; and while holding onto much of the good culture she’d inherited from her predecessors, she added a hefty dollop of internationalism to an already-popular mix. Not only did she make the bold move of inviting the legendary Mario Vargas Llosa to headline the festival, Jan brought music and politics to Charlotte Square too.

She introduced readings for imprisoned writers (which would live on for years as an Amnesty project) and presided over one of the most important changes in the Book Festival’s history: taking it from biennial to annual. Despite her compassionate and foundational innovations, Jan moved too quickly for the Book Festival trustees. After taking the necessary step of moving to a yearly cycle, as she later explained, she ‘fell foul of the board, being slightly headstrong, too much my own person, and naïve as to significance of profit in the first change-over year.’ She was also ahead of her time.

Jan remained a voice in Scottish journalism after leaving the Book Festival in 1997. Her untimely death from cancer at the age of 63 in 2012 prompted renewed recognition, and an award for young journalists was inaugurated in her name. Perhaps most importantly, there’s a rich seam of internationalism and humanism that continues to be part of the Book Festival more than 25 years after she left. There’s still a distinct taste of Jan Fairley’s fizzing internationalism every time a new Book Festival programme is baked.

ATHERINE LOCKERBIE (2000–2009)

Nine extraordinary Augusts, 9000 memories of our glorious green oasis of thought. We enticed the great literary giants of the time; not with fat fees, ours was a profoundly egalitarian festival where everyone, whether world-renowned or unheard-of author, was paid exactly the same modest sum. But entice them we did. In those years, when the festival grew rapidly in size, reach and reputation, we had a dozen Nobel Laureates, Booker winners too many to mention, and just as importantly, new authors for both adults and children from many lands as well as local.

Looking back, it’s sobering to realise how many of my most fondly remembered guests are now in the great writers’ retreat in the sky, hopefully sharing a dram and happy recollections of Charlotte Square. Among them, Muriel Spark, Seamus Heaney, Susan Sontag, Hilary Mantel, Iain Banks, Doris Lessing, Tony Benn, Martin Amis. They’ll be keeping the angels on their toes.

How to pick memories from such a multitude? The reunions in our unorthodox green room, the yurt: in one cosy nook, Harold Pinter is in deep discussion with his pal John Hurt (‘Hurt’s in the yurt!’ went a whisper round the site) over how best to time the pauses in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. Out in the Main Theatre, Margaret Atwood’s astonishing LongPen invention allows both Alice Munro in Canada and Norman Mailer in Cape Cod to sign books for us in Edinburgh, live and in real time, as if by magic.

Other enduring images: Ian Rankin kneeling at the feet of Muriel Spark. True, she’s small and seated and Ian is tall, but it’s the picture of adoration. Carol Ann Duffy and her daughter revelling at our closing ceilidh. Amos Oz strolling towards the exit when the young security guard assigned to him (he elicited strong feelings from different Middle Eastern factions) suddenly blurts out he’d like his autograph: he’s been so moved listening to his events. Crowds singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a beaming Sean Connery. The great Toni Morrison, a proud empress in braids and a flowing gown, being persuaded it would be rude to Scots NOT to take a glass of whisky into her book signing. I could pick hundreds more. One is especially poignant. It’s 2005 and the fatwa is no longer in force. Salman Rushdie walks onto site alone and smiling, no special protection. Calm and safe in our green oasis of thought.

Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh College Of Art, 12–28 August.

Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy has created an acclaimed work for the stage inspired by Lars von Trier’s brutal and controversial movie Dogville. Known for merging the worlds of film and theatre, she tells James Mottram how the far-right’s rise in her homeland and a fear of history repeating itself played into the making of Dusk