Fiction is a way of telling the truth – Ali Smith in Edinburgh

Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, interviews the experimental novelist at book festival event

How to Be Both review – Ali Smith’s dazzling novel hits the stage

An experiment in presenting fiction beyond panel discussion or onstage interview pays off handsomely

Home Office stopped author from speaking at UK festival, says publisher

Visa refusals mean Palestinian Nayrouz Qarmout unlikely to get to Edinburgh book festival

Home Office refuses visas for authors invited to Edinburgh book festival

Festival director Nick Barley says ‘humiliating’ application process will deter writers and damage cultural life in UK

‘A thoroughly entertaining failure’: the return of Muriel Spark’s mega-flop

Her savage send-up of the London intelligentsia was panned by critics. But could Doctors of Philosophy now be about to hit its prime?

A desire for Duras: Katie Mitchell and Alice Birch on the writer’s erotic, existential mystery

Part philosophical meditation, part fantasy, Marguerite Duras’s 1982 novella La Maladie de la Mort comes to the stage in a hi-tech Edinburgh festival show

Brisbane writers’ festival under fire after Germaine Greer and Bob Carr ‘disinvited’

Event disputes accusations by Melbourne University Press that dropping the pair from its program was an attack on free speech

Shilpa Gupta: the artist bringing silenced poets back to life

For centuries, poets have been jailed or killed for speaking out against injustice – but they speak again an eerie sound installation at Edinburgh art festival

From Aquaman to The Walking Dead: 10 things we learned from Comic-Con 2018

The much-anticipated fan convention in San Diego brought with it a host of new footage and info from new movies and returning seasons

‘He was high-brow, low-brow, every-brow!’ – the genius of Leonard Bernstein

Composer, conductor, inspiration, FBI suspect … Leonard Bernstein was born 100 years ago this August, and this summer’s Proms will celebrate his work. Musicians, critics and his own family remember an astounding talent

Timber review – all the wood’s a stage for spectacular forest festival

A new arts extravaganza offers campfire stories, breathtaking theatre, laughing yoga and lessons on how to think like a tree

The End of Eddy: how Édouard Louis made the personal political

Pamela Carter recognised aspects of her own life in Louis’s book about growing up determined to escape his French village. Now she’s bringing his story to the stage

Indigenous voices have never been more important to Australian literature

Opportunities for Indigenous writers have grown but we must ensure they’re driven by Indigenous values

From Lawrence of Arabia to Breaking Bad: the desert as a cultural oasis

A place of sanctuary, rocks and rock festivals – what draws artists and writers to the desert’s unforgiving landscape?

The Immeasurable World by William Atkins review – voyages in the desert

Escaping the end of a love affair, Atkins explores empty, arid landscapes in Arabia and China, and gets caught up in the debauchery of Burning Man