Xiaolu Guo sweeps into the Scottish Power Studio Theatre. The author and film maker is here to promote her new novel UFO in Her Eyes, set in a small Chinese fishing village, similar to the one where Guo grew up before moving to Beijing to study art.

I'm still a bit grouchy after missing the Glasgow: New Writing event this morning due to the state of the tramworks on Leith Walk.  But the atmosphere in the Peppers Theatre cheers me up enormously, as a selection of writers from the University of Edinburgh's MA and PhD creative writing programs take the stage.

Brian Taylor introduces Shirley Williams in the RBS Main Theatre, just before the rain begins to rattle the tent. The co-founder of the Social Democratic Party, the title of whose new book Climbing the Shelves refers to her childhood habit of climbing her parents bookshelves to reach the enticing literature near the ceiling of their Georgian flat, dives straight into current events.

I quickly drink my late morning coffee and abandon the press pod, filled with newspapers featuring unflattering photographs of Kenny MacAskill. In Charlotte Square, the sun is blinding; the patio outside the London Review of Books tent is a blur of sunglasses, overpriced white wine and linen in varying shades of beige.

In the Writer's Retreat, Chika Unigwe is describing the initial culture shock of moving from Nigeria to Brussels, which included mistakes of ettiquette and, for the first time, seeing sex workers displayed in windows. Coming from a country where prostitution is underground, this image stayed with the author and eventually influenced On Black Sisters' Street.

Some blessed person has switched off the heat in the Writer's Retreat. Aamer Hussein and Roma Tearne are reading from their new books; Hussein describes his as part fable, part romantic comedy, while Tearne's novel is the story of a Tamil-Sinhala marriage in the midst of political crisis.