Barley to step down as director of Edinburgh International Book Festival 

Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, has announced he will step down in September after 14 years.

Barley will remain in post until the 2023 Edinburgh International Book Festival has been delivered, which will take place between 12th and 28th August 2023. The successful applicant will take up the post in September 2023. 

Recruitment will begin in mid-February in collaboration with industry specific recruitment specialist AEM International.

He said: “Overseeing this great festival has been both a privilege and a challenge. As well as helping maintain Edinburgh’s role as a global capital for culture, I have aimed to create a festival that is full of joyful encounters: a forum for thoughtful conversations between writers and readers.

“I’m particularly proud to have been able to build on the festival’s strength and reputation during the devastating pandemic period, giving people all over the world continued access to the quality of discourse for which we are rightly celebrated. It’s been an honour to work with such a stellar team: the festival is so much more than its director and the team is primed to work with my successor on the next phase.”

During his tenure Barley brought authors from Maria Ressa, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and Malala Yousafzai, to George R R Martin, Elif Shafak, Hilary Mantel, Ocean Vuong, Haruki Murakami and Colson Whitehead to the festival.

His innovations have included the free nightly festival Unbound, which saw a range of performances from the likes of Nile Rodgers and the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers; Outriders, in which Scottish writers such as Kayus Bankole, Jenni Fagan, Harry Josephine Giles and Nadine Aisha Jassat teamed up with locally-based authors to make journeys across Africa, America and Europe; and Playing With Books, in which novels such as David Keenan’s This Is Memorial Device (Faber & Faber), Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (Penguin) and Miriam Toews’s Women Talking (Faber & Faber) inspired innovative theatre productions. 

Allan Little, chair of the Edinburgh International Book Festival board, said: “On behalf of the Book Festival Board, I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Nick for steering the festival through both exhilarating and turbulent times, and for leaving it in such robust good health for his successor. Nick has led the organisation to its position as one of the most recognised and respected literary festivals in the world and recent circumstances might well have proved insurmountable without someone of Nick’s experience and passion at the helm. While we will miss him, we wish Nick all the very best and know he will continue to be a friend of the Edinburgh Book Festival for many, many years to come.”

In November, Edinburgh International Book Festival announced it had taken the “difficult but necessary decision” to scale down due to “the unpredictable nature of the external environment” and changing audience behaviours precipitated by the cost of living crisis, in a move that meant "the resizing of the incredibly talented team behind the festival and charity’s work".