Traditional structure, who needs it? Not the Book Works' Semina series, nor its editor Stewart Home.  I was drawn to this event at the gloriously creepy new Summerhall venue because of what I’ve noticed as a renewed and rising openness to less commercial projects, a striking thing in the current book market.

Stewart, deadpan and refreshingly not at all trendy, begins by standing on his head (apparently he does this a lot) while reading from Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie - a collection of Viagra spam emails with the pronouns changed to the names of famous women and gay men in the art world.

He then introduces Bridget McKenna, who alternately reads and recites from her work Experiment, a dark fable about a king who uses two orphaned children for a human development experiment. Her prose is impressive, and though it takes her some time to settle into reading onstage, she’s clearly in command of her work.

Katrina Palmer is next, reading from her work The Dark Object, never looking up from her book but still managing to engage her audience with, again, impressive prose which is rooted in stylistic confidence. I’m struck by both Bridget and Katrina’s discomfort onstage combined with their clear talent, and the way this talent rings through as the event progresses.

The only downside is the lack of information; I’d like to have known a bit more about the project and the writers’ backgrounds. But there is a clear anti-commercial backbone to the event, mirroring the work itself, and I find myself paying more attention to the prose than the authors’ lists of achievement.

Summerhall's short literary programme is coming to an end, now; I'm back at the Book Festival proper itself tomorrow.