The Upcoming 2025 Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival

In my first month living in Edinburgh, I attended every conference, bookshop event, and author meet and greet I could, but nothing stood out as much as the Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival.

Spanning two brilliant days, the festival brought together an international crowd of around five hundred people and hooked my attention from start to finish. The panels on witch trials, cozy fantasy, regency romance, and historical fiction were all fascinating and informative on current market trends. Most impressive of all was the conversation between award-winning author, Maggie O’Farrell, and renowned literary agent, Jenny Brown, on female writers that inspired O’Farrell (which added at least a dozen books to my TBR!).

The only drawback of the 2024 festival was that I could not watch all the events as I was a festival volunteer. So I promised myself in 2025 I would only be a spectator.

Turns out, I broke my promise.

Inspired by the Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival’s commitment to celebrating “writing for, by, and about women,” I reached out to the festival and arranged a work placement under the festival’s program director, Olivia Kekewich (About Us, 2025).

As part of the festival’s organising committee, I am learning just how much effort and hard work goes into arranging book festivals. From simply getting licensed with the city to making sure there is enough room in the budget for a premium Canva account to the most obvious task of scheduling author panels – putting on a book festival is a massive campaign. The Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival is specifically a charity festival, meaning none of its organising members are paid and every year the festival participates in community outreach. This year the festival’s community outreach includes free workshops and author talks at various Edinburgh City Libraries.

Within the multitude of tasks the organising committee takes on, I am in charge of the 2025 Agent Speed Dating event. At the Agent Speed Dating event, authors can submit their manuscript pitch and a writing sample to a selection of literary agents who they then go on ten-minute “dates” with. In these ten minutes, the authors receive feedback on their submitted materials and can ask for advice from experienced agents. Last year’s Agent Speed Dating event was so well received by both authors and agents, that the event is expanding from seven agents to ten for the 2025 festival.

With Olivia’s help, I am reaching out to literary agents from both Edinburgh and London, asking them to participate in the event and communicating their compensation according to the Scottish Book Trust’s Live Literature guidelines. I am also in discussion with the confirmed agents on what they would like to be included in the author’s submission packet. Heading this event has helped me learn more about the agent side of publishing while also honing my professional communications skills.

In the future, I am excited to help Olivia with the scheduling of the festival’s 2025 author panels and workshops. I hope to learn more about working with authors, publicists, and chair people.

Unfortunately, I cannot yet reveal the festival’s 2025 author lineup, but let’s just say, you are busy on September 27 and 28 because the 2025 Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival is not to be missed!