An Evening With Chiara Bullen and Robyn Pritzker

Chiara Bullen and Robyn Pritzker are in conversation at Waterstones Edinburgh West End on Wednesday 21 October, from 19:00 to 20:00. They'll be talking about their novels, The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance and The Moonsingers, with Anahit Behrooz leading the discussion. It's a double bill of fantasy, and both writers come from academic backgrounds: Bullen is a Scottish writer and academic, and Pritzker holds a doctorate in gothic literature. They describe their books as heart-warming and poignant.

Bullen's The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance follows Ainsworth Gladsly, an ambitious young scholar and historian sent to document the exploits of adventurers facing the perils of the legendary Mount Vengeance and the dragon said to inhabit it. While there, he meets the innkeeper Honey. Pritzker's The Moonsingers centres on Ismay Gebhardt, a teacher dismissed after an accident who becomes a private tutor in the village of Glenmaidens. There, she discovers that the Underhill sisters and their father are fairies who settled in the mortal world, with an ancient oak tree as their only bridge back to the moonlit realm.

Both stories share a certain kind of protagonist — a scholar or a teacher finding themselves in a world that doesn't quite follow the rules they're used to. Having the two authors together should make for a good look at how they each approach that transition from the academic to the fantastical, and how their backgrounds in literature and academia feed into the worlds they've built.

It's at Waterstones on Princes Street, 128 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2 4AD. Tickets are £5 for general admission, or you can get a book and ticket for £23 or £13, depending on the option you go for. The conversation runs from 19:00 to 20:00.