Come bask in the company of your favourite ghosts at the Good Grief! Salon – where the grief comes glittered, gritty and gutsy. We have all lost something over ‘The Big Still’, this last weird epoch of living, be it: time, trips, tips, friends, cash, kudos, lovers, or freaky opportunities we’re not yet ready to utter. What better reason to get together than to celebrate the love in the things we’re missing? Let’s light a fuse for the jive of healing, let words be our beacons, beamed into the night. For one night only, prize-winning Edinburgh writer and Neu! Reekie! co-founder, Michael Pedersen presents some of his favourite voices from across literature and the arts. Celebrating with him is an all-star cast of writers and musicians: E A Hanks, Gemma Cairney, Rachel Sermanni, Hollie McNish, and Michael Mullen, who delivers a lustre-loaded salon-style waltz of poetry, prose and music, lighting a spark to make our way through the dark.

This is a live event with all the authors and participants appearing on stage, in the venue.

(The Edinburgh International Book Festival will be a hybrid Book Festival in 2021 – a fabulous online programme of over 250 events for adults and children, streamed live on the website. Alongside, they will welcome in-person audiences for a wide range of the events in the programme, which you can book on their website. This year’s Book Festival will take place from Saturday 14 to Monday 30 August at their new Festival home: the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh College of Art on Lauriston Place in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town.)