Jenny Niven is CEO and Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She is an internationally recognised advocate for the arts and culture and has created, developed and led literature and cultural programmes and festivals for over 20 years. 

In previous roles, she was founder and Director of the award-winning Push the Boat Out, a festival of poetry, spoken word and language, Head of Literature, Publishing and Languages at Creative Scotland (the national funding and development body for the arts, screen and creative industries), Executive Producer of the Edinburgh International Culture Summit, and led on the creation of the Muriel Spark 100 centenary celebrations. Internationally, she was Head of Programme/Associate Director at the Wheeler Centre for Books Writing & Ideas, Melbourne, and co-founded and ran Beijing’s first book festival from 2004 to 2010. 

Jenny has had an equally enduring interest and background in radio and on stage discussion, and has conducted hundreds of live interviews with authors since 2006, including Armando Ianucci, Nobel prize winner Mo Yan, Jeffrey Eugenides, Colson Whitehead, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Louise Welsh, Yiyun Li, Chang Rae Lee, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and many more.