Early morning, early August 2015: my first full Fringe as an Edinburgh resident. I arrived on the Royal Mile before the box office opened so I could beat the queues. I may have been the only Fringe-goer at this hour, but I was not alone…

Having been in therapy for several years now, I am no stranger to the question, “What would you say to your inner child?” I am never prepared to answer it, though. In the small room that hosts Legendary, we are greeted by this question, beamed onto a backdrop from an old school projector. Yellow balloons hover along the edges of the stage and an ethereal character – loose hair, clad in a long white lace dress – stands amongst the audience, gently welcoming those that walk in.

The scaffolding on North Bridge is finally down and I can see a 40-foot Black woman looking at me through the viewfinder of her camera. It is the advertisement for the exhibition Sandra George: Start from the Level at the City Art Centre. I pause in her giant gaze, a small subject in her line of sight, and offer mine back.

What do we choose to listen to every day? A year has passed since I stopped taking headphones with me when I leave the house, since I cancelled my Spotify subscription due to the company’s complicity with Israel’s genocidal campaign in Palestine. The music streaming platform’s founder, Daniel Ek, pumped millions of dollars stolen from artists into the German AI military company Helsing, which has active contracts with international arms companies supplying Israel.

Teenage Beldina Odenyo's face fills the screen. "I suppose if anything ever happens to me,” she says, “it would be good if somebody found this and basically understood how I was feeling." Watching the opening of the feature film Bel, I felt like a witness to a prophecy: Odenyo ended her life just as her star was about to shoot.

A poetic Response to Angela Flournoy and Claudia Rankine’s event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2026, written and read by Hannah Lavery.

For years, I have wanted to write an essay on how the closing credit cards that come up at the end of biopics always make me cry. You know the ones. “Turing’s work inspired generations of research” from The Imitation Game. “That same year, John and June were married and settled into the lake house” from Walk the Line…

Heungbu tending to an injured swallow. The youngest pig building his house out of bricks. Fairytales teach children culture and values in ways few other things can. Hard work bears fruit. Bravery brings reward. Kindness begets beauty.

Arcana is a poetic, music-led hero's quest by the French Cameroonian musician, performer, director and educator, Fay Guiffo. I see the theatre piece on the day it opens at the Assembly Roxy on Roxburgh Place. Outside, rainclouds ride low over the converted church. Inside, it’s dim. A few faint lights pick out a slim, still figure, who seems pressed down by the height of vaulted ceilings.

I cannot pinpoint when I started oscillating between anger and despair. Another racist attack in Scotland, another empty statement. Another precarious creative opportunity, another exhausting conversation with an institution. A cycle of feeling unsafe or unheard. As far-right violence became more normalised and the arts remained indifferent, I felt fewer pulses of hope. In the month preceding the Edinburgh Fringe, I flatlined into rage.

I have always been interested in memory. In my writing practice, I cannot divest memory from culture and inheritance. Obvious personal entry points are the iconography of La Virgen de Guadalupe whose portrait hangs in the house of all my elder family members, or the distinct food culture of my maternal northern México…