For EAF25, we asked our writers, contributors, and staff to recommend books that have shaped the way they think and work.
The collected books were hosted in the EAF Living Room at the Pavilion during the 2025 Festival, providing a quiet space for people to read and reflect during their visit. Artists contributed their own works, as well as those that have inspired them.
Below is the full list of recommendations, as well as links to purchase them — take away some reading inspiration, now that the Edinburgh nights are drawing in, and find a way to carry forward the festival’s themes and ideas beyond August.
We are extremely grateful to Fringe of Colour for supporting the Living Room, and to Lighthouse Books for, as always, being a fantastic source of both inspiration and literature.
The Recommendations
Jj Fadaka, EAF25 Artist, My Blood Runs Purple
→ States of the Body Produced by Love by Nisha Ramayya
A modern mystical journey through love, this book weaves essays, poetry and images together to offer fierce meditations on diasporic identity, language and resistance.
Ria Andrews, EAF25 Artist, My Blood Runs Purple
→ For Such a Time as This by Shani Akilah
Bringing to life the stories of Black-British Londoners in and around lockdown, this short story collection watches Niah and her friends navigate friendship, romance, family, community, and more.
Aileen Angsutorn Lees, EAF25 Artist, Decolonising the Outdoors
→ Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh
Through six hill walks, spanning a period of twenty-six years, Shehadeh documents the destructive transformation of Palestinian landscapes under Israeli occupation.
→ Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
A meditation for social movements and our whole species, based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals. What can we learn from our fierce, queer, protective, persevering aquatic cousins?
Lewis Hetherington + CJ Mahony, EAF25 Artists, who will be remembered here
→ What to Conserve? Heritage, Memory, and Management of Meanings by Ehab Kamel-Ahmed
Interrogating ideas of “cultural heritage”, this paper explores the two-faced coin of tangible and intangible history — what we lose if we only focus on “pickled” and picturesque images from the past.
Ellis Jackson Kroese, EAF25 Artist, Memory is a Museum
→ Trumpet by Jackie Kay
The moving story of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody, who is outed as trans after his death. His loved ones fall into tension as different voices struggle to tell their version of his story.
Alice Rekab, EAF25 Artist, Let Me Show You Who I Am
→ Mehrfamilienhaus by Alice Rekab
Rekab’s first artist book features collages created for their exhibition at Museum Villa Stuck, essays from contributors, and an indexical overview of the origins and lives of the objects they use.
Lewis Walker, EAF25 Artist, Bornsick
→ The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Following a journey of enlightenment, Tolle points towards a healthier and happier life by guiding readers to surrender to the present moment, away from the analytical mind and into being fully present.
Más Arte Más Acción, EAF25 Artists, Around a Tree
→ Psyche Or, the Butterfly – An Expanded Field Guide by Alison Turnbull + Dr Blanca Huertas
Published by Más Arte Más Acción, this wide-ranging field guide documents Turnbull’s time studying butterflies in the Pacific rainforest with Huertas, through drawings, photographs, notes, fragments and literary sources.
Brandon Logan, EAF25 Artist, Little Low Heavens
→ Chroma by Derek Jarman
In this poetic, lyrical book, Jarman explores the uses of colour from Pliny to Leonardo, medieval to modern, alongside personal musings and memories — including on the deterioration of his own eyesight.
Haven for Artists, EAF25 Artists, I Will Always Be Looking For You
→ I Will Always Be Looking For You: A Queer Anthology on Arab Art, multiple authors
This beautiful anthology brings together 55 writers and artists across 13 Arabic-speaking countries, to expand the definition of queerness in the Arab world — not as a fixed identity, but as a generative force, a method, a rupture, and a refusal.
Rabiya Choudhry, EAF25 Artist, Give light and people will find the way (Ella Baker)
→ The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World by Jennifer Higgie
Blending memoir and art history, Higgie explores the lives of women artists of the past — finding the thread between their work and spirituality, myth, and ritual, that extends to this day.
Kim McAleese, EAF Director
→ Radio Ballads: Songs for Change by Serpentine Civic Projects
Bringing together contemporary artists and residents of Barking and Dagenham, the Ballads emerge from the lived experiences of those who sustain civic life — often invisibly — through networks of care, resilience, and mutual support.
→ Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
Spade presents the radical resource-sharing practice of mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. The text also offers concrete tools for organising through challenges like burnout, conflict, and communal decision-making.
Eleanor Edmondson, EAF Curator
→ Duck Feet by Ely Percy
This coming of age novel set in mid-noughties Renfrew and Paisley follows Kirsty Campbell and her friends from first to sixth year of secondary school, painting an authentic portrait of growing up working class in Scotland.
→ We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth by Ahmed Alnaouq
Collecting the stories of young people throughout Gaza, this collection portrays stories of those born under Israeli occupation and blockade: their individual hopes, dreams, and lives worth living.
→ The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
This seminal text offers a new paradigm for treating trauma. Focusing on the syncing of the mind and body, the case studies present alternative routes to equilibrium through the power of art and movement.
Elle Haswell, EAF Civic Curator
→ Fighting Transphobia: A Practical and Theoretical Guide by rs21
Curated by Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century (rs21), this pamphlet pulls together knowledge on building power as a trans liberation movement, linked firmly to class struggle.
→ Transcestry: 10 Years of the Museum of Transology
Museum of Transology documents the UK’s most significant collection of objects representing trans, non-binary, and intersex people’s lives — from clothes to pictures, medical ephemera, art and print materials.
NB: This book doesn’t seem to be available online anymore, but you can find MoT’s collection details here.
Brandy Frazier, EAF Evaluation Coordinator
→ The Fights That Make Us by Sarah Hagger-Holt
Having newly come out as non-binary, Jesse discovers their cousin’s diary entries documenting the challenges of queer life thirty five years earlier, inspiring them to share queer history far and wide.
→ Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
In this celebratory children’s story of self-expression, a glimpse of three women dressed as mermaids inspires young Julian to do the same — but how will his family react?
→ These Olive Trees by Aya Ghanameh
The story of a Palestinian family’s connection to the land, this picture book tells the story of one girl forced to flee her home, and her promise to make sure her beloved olive trees live on.
Levi Richards, EAF Marketing Officer
→ In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
This surreal, fluid memoir documents a queer experience of domestic abuse, analysed through lenses of culture, place, narrative, and more, shedding light on the history of other lesbian survivors.
→ Man-Hating Psycho by Iphgenia Baal
In this collection, each short story dramatises the disconnect between public identity and real life self, giving insight into modern life through a digital lens, and rooted across London.
Millie Player, EAF Production + Events Coordinator
→ Selected Political Writings by Kanafani Ghassan
This collection of the eminent Palestinian novelist’s political writings explores his perspective as a leading political thinker, strategist, and revolutionary living under occupation.
→ Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene by Xuanlin Tham
This bite-sized essay explores the politically subversive potential of sex on screen — and why, in a world of increasing censorship, the radical sensuality of the sex scene is worth defending.
→ The Doll’s Alphabet by Camila Grudova
This grotesque collection of short stories plays with repeated motifs in a fairytale fashion: sewing machines, tinned foods, mirrors against dark, dilapidated backdrops.
→ Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? by Mark Fisher
Cultural critic Mark Fisher analyses the ways capitalism has presented itself as the only viable option — the impact of this on work, culture, education, and more, and whether we can imagine an alternative.
→ Lote by Shola von Reinhold
Mathilda follows her fascination with a forgotten member of the Bright Young Things, Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, to a bizarre conceptual art residency that throws her aesthetic values into relief.
You can explore more online at Lighthouse Books, Edinburgh’s oldest radical bookshop.
Fringe of Colour is a multi-award-winning initiative dedicated to supporting People of Colour at arts festivals in Scotland and beyond. As well as their vital yearly database of PoC-led work at the festivals, Fringe of Colour platforms artists through film festivals, a publishing platform, and a podcast.