For the fourth year running, EAF teamed up with the Skinny to commission four emerging art writers to respond to the Festival programme. 

Three of the selected writers, Holly Allan, Megan Rudden, and Peilin Shi, have worked with The Skinny’s Art Editor Rachel Ashenden to produce two works each. Each responds in their own unique creative voice, to the parts of the programme that spoke to them the most.

For the first time, we also commissioned a Longform Emerging Writer: a writer who would work closely with EAF’s Early Career Artist-in-Residence across a two year period, to produce a longer form work. The piece from the first Longform Emerging Writer, Brooke Hailey Hoffert, in collaboration with artist Hamish Halley, will be published in 2026.

Read on to see the emerging writers’ work that has been published to date.

Holly Allan

Trans Masc Studies, Memory is a Museum, Edinburgh Art Festival by Murray Orr

An Imaginary Museum: Trans Masc Studies at EAF25
“Amongst the protest pins and patches are fragments of everyday life, delicate and soft in their mundanity. In a culture saturated with work that – necessarily and crucially – deals with resistance and struggle, it’s refreshing to see this ephemera documenting something as ordinary as the pets and hobbies of trans masc individuals.” 
On Trans Masc Studies: Memory is a Museum — read more

The Spectacle of History: Wael Shawky @ Talbot Rice Gallery
“Hyper glossy and honey translucent, the marionettes are at once beautiful and grotesque, fantastical and alien. They are displayed in tiered rows beside their on-screen counterparts, offering us a peek behind the curtain. Dangling from the ceiling, their strings visible, Shawky gestures at the transference of control that comes from the top down, and the hierarchy of political puppets in power.”
On Wael Shawky — read more

Megan Rudden

WYRD by Jonathan Baldock. Photo: Neil Hanna

Wyrd Encounters: Jonathan Baldock at Jupiter Artland
“Reptile, bird or mammal, they are united in their difference. Fur, feathers and scales all the same hessian skin, thick and versatile. Cut from the same cloth. Human parts emerge from stuffed fabric; ears, face, nose, feet. Fleshy extremities scanned into a mechanical womb, born layer by layer, then returned to clay and the body. Hand stitched on to beings that hope to make solid some parts of themselves. Their permanent state is transitional, almost human, almost animal, always becoming.”
On Jonathan Baldock: WYRD — read more

Megan Rudden’s article responding to CJ Mahony and Lewis Hetherington: who will be remembered here is currently available to read in the Skinny’s September print issue.

Peilin Shi

Humpty Dumpty by Mike Nelson.

Fierce Tenderness: Linder Sterling at Mount Stuart
“Every rise and fall enacts a kind of rebirth, a cycle of deconstructing and regenerating, of endless waves and returns. Boundaries blur between violence and protection, aggression and care, pause and momentum, release and demise. Different denotations co-exist within the same stroke, a hand extended might be to kill or to cradle. Meaning is shaped by its affective charge and other existences that receive it.”
On Linder: A kind of glamour about me — read more

Temporary Worlds: Mike Nelson, Siân Davey and HOST at EAF25
“Is this a fictional ruin, or an alternative reality altogether? The installation positions visitors as explorers, detectives, even gamers, drifting through an architectural labyrinth of orientation and disorientation – a mind game.” 
On Mike Nelson: Humpty Dumpty (above), Siân Davey: The Garden + EAF X Outer Spaces: HOST — read more

The EAF X The Skinny Emerging Writers Award is designed to platform early career art writers from backgrounds that are underrepresented in Scottish journalism. To be the first to hear about any future opportunities for art writers, you can subscribe to EAF’s newsletter.