Events featuring writing on travel and place over the next couple of months include the following:

Cardiff Book Festival (September 7-9), where Angus Roxburgh and Trevor Fishlock, who have reported from Moscow for, respectively, the BBC and The Daily Telegraph, discuss modern Russia and “the good, the bad and the ugly side of being a foreign correspondent”. With Wales celebrating its coastline in 2018 with a “Year of the Sea”, Ifor ap Glyn, the National Poet, joins Dafydd Elis Thomas, the Culture Minister, and Lleucu Siencyn, chief executive of Literature Wales, to discuss what words and waves mean to the nation.

Wigtown Book Festival (September 21-30), where Aida Edemariam will tell how she immersed herself in the landscape of Ethiopia to write The Wife’s Tale, a biography of her grandmother, Yetemegnu, who was born in the northern city of Gondar and died five years ago aged nearly 100; Damian Le Bas tells of his journey through Gypsy Britain for The Stopping Places; Guy Stagg recalls his 10-month pilgrimage from Canterbury to Jerusalem, recounted in The Crossway; Nicholas Blincoe talks about the small but historic place he called home for 20 years, and whose history he has written in Bethlehem: Biography of a Town; Cameron McNeish, “who embodies Scotland’s love affair with the outdoors”, talks about a life in the mountains as recalled in There’s Always the Hills; and Tristan Gooley, “the Natural Navigator”, introduces his latest book, Wild Signs and Star Paths.

Marlborough Literature Festival (September 27-30), where Tim Dee will be talking about Ground Work: Writings on Places and People; Lois Pryce, author of Revolutionary Ride, will recall her adventures on a motorbike in Iran; and Aida Edemariam (see above) will be talking about The Wife’s Tale.

Ilkley Literature Festival (September 28-October 14), where William Atkins reports on his journeys in desert places for The Immeasurable World; Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin introduce their primer on a new geological age: The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene; Paul Scraton (born in Lancashire but based in Berlin) reports on his journeys along the German Baltic coast for Ghosts on the Shore; Joshua Jelly-Schapiro talks about his book Island People: The Caribbean and the World; and Richard Morris argues that Yorkshire, as the subtitle of his new book has it, is “England’s Greatest County”.