Creative Scotland Crowdmatch has provided £270 of match funding
Pentlands Book Festival 2026
United Kingdom
Your donation unlocks match funding
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Your donation unlocks match funding
Aim
Pentlands Book Festival is a free festival run by volunteers to bring great writers and literature to the villages of southwest Edinburgh.
Pentlands Book Festival (pentlandsbookfestival.org) has been running for 12 years in the villages of southwest Edinburgh. Our aim is to bring artists and audiences together in a welcoming, local space, and to build a sense of community through a shared love of literature and the arts.
We're a small group of unpaid volunteers who started the festival because our communities don't have easy access to the cultural offerings of central Edinburgh. While we're a small team, we run a broad and ambitious festival: from promoting local debut authors, to Bookbug sessions for the very youngest, to a short story-writing competition for schoolchildren — through to headline names like Val McDermid, Jackie Kay, Billy Kay, Alan Bissett, Lesley Riddoch, and Denise Mina.
We also work with local poets, musicians, and artists, and use local venues — public libraries, schools, cafes, and even a funeral parlour — to bring events into the heart of the community.
Right now, thanks to matched funding from Creative Scotland and The National Lottery, every £1 you give is doubled. That means a £10 pledge becomes £20 for the festival — at no extra cost to you. This won't last forever, so if you've been meaning to give, now is the moment it goes furthest.
Here's what your donation does:
- A few pounds covers part of a room hire.
- A bit more helps pay a visiting author's fee.
- Every pledge, large or small, adds up to keep the festival free and open to all.
Your donation today has an immediate, direct impact. If you've ever enjoyed a free author talk, a Bookbug session, or watched a young writer's story win a prize, this is your chance to give something back.
Please pledge what you can today — and while you're at it, share this page with one person who'd love PBF too. Help us bring another year of brilliant books, stories, and community to southwest Edinburgh, and make sure PBF is here for the next twelve years.
Thank you.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 9th December 2026 at 8:51am