From an opening rendezvous with Carol Ann Duffy, the first woman Poet Laureate, via encounters with the writers of The Wire to a masterclass with Tom Kitchin, a Michelin-starred chef, the Edinburgh International Book Festival will today reveal the programme which confirms its status as the largest and most influential festival of its type in the world.

Richard Holloway, its guest director, said this year's festival - the 27th - would easily match up to any of its predecessors with “the usual cosmic range of authors”. More than 200,000 people are expected to attend the 14-day event which has been produced in association with The Times, and will run from August 15-31.

The programme embraces rare appearances from some of the world's best-selling authors. The elusive Canadian Douglas Coupland, will launch his latest novel, Generation A, while other substantial figures, literary and otherwise, include the novelists David Peace, Margaret Drabble, William Boyd and Neil Gaiman; the humorist Garrison Keillor; and a colourful crew of politicians, public figures and commentators, including Cherie Blair, Jeremy Paxman and Shirley Williams.

Jacqueline Wilson, the creator of Tracey Beaker, and Cornelia Funke, the German author whose Inkworld books have spawned a Hollywood movie, feature in a programme for children which also incudes Peter Rabbit, a creature called the Terrible Greedy Fossifoo and the loveable Little Wombat.

Not for the first time, said DrHolloway, the great Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood will provide one of the highlights of the festival, introducing her latest novel, The Year of the Flood, in a church on Princes Street. The book is Atwood's account of the end of the world, and its introduction to an Edinburgh audience comes complete with a choir and organ music. “The book is about the human situation and is her take on religion as an artist,” Dr Holloway said. “It's an event we are all very excited about.”

Dr Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, is standing in for Catherine Lockerbie, the festival's director, who is on sick leave. His distinctive contribution has been to curate a roster of debates, featuring distinguished writers, philosophers and commentators.

Chief among these will be The Future of Politics, which has been sponsored by The Times, in the wake of the scandal of MPs' expenses. Other set-piece discussions range from issues of economic crisis and social exclusion, to childhood and cyberspace and will include contributions from Susie Orbach, the therapist; the philosopher John Gray; and Chris Mullin, the politician and journalist. A 200th-anniversary debate on the uses and abuses of Darwin will feature contributions from biographers James Moore and Susan Manning.

“We'll have some fun. The whole point of these debates is the involvement of the audiences. Catherine Lockerbie sees the whole thing as a tumult, a rolling tumult, and so it is,” Dr Holloway added.

“Scots are an argumentative race, but it is not all contrariness. We have learnt during our turbulent history that ideas are dangerous things that need to be tested time and again in debate if they are to enhance rather than enchain the human community.”

Some of the most popular American authors are among the best-sellers beating a path to Edinburgh this summer. George Dawes Green, whose thriller The Juror won a $1.5million Hollywood deal just two days after he delivered it to his agent in 1995, arrives in town with its follow-up, Ravens. Fourteen years in gestation, the novel with some justification is billed as “long-awaited”.

Richard Price and David Simon are best known in Britain as the screenwriters of the BBC2 hit show, The Wire, but both come to Edinburgh as successful authors in their own right. Price, Oscar-nominated for scriptwriting The Colour of Money, has a hugely acclaimed novel, Lush Life, which explores New York's seedier side. Simon's true-life account of police work on the streets of Baltimore has earned comparison with Truman Capote and Norman Mailer.

As the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe rage around the city in August, a handful of actors and comedians have found their way into the relative calm of the Book Festival site in Charlotte Square.

Frank Skinner and Dave Gorman arrive with memoirs and real-life tales, while Daniel Depp (“Johnny's good-looking brother”, according to one festival insider) arrives with a thriller, Loser's Town, featuring a former stuntman turned private investigator, named David Spandau.

West End favourites have words to say, including Diana Quick, Antony Sher and Richard Eyre. Joss Ackland, 81, is at the centre of one the festival's most moving event. As his wife, Rosemary, was dying of motor neurone disease, Ackland discovered her diaries, kept from the age of 15, until the entries from her last days, which were written with her husband holding the pen. Her account of his career, told by him, promises to be “a hugely poignant event”, Dr Holloway said.

Paul Preston's account of the war reporting of George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, while a second event focuses on Ethel MacDonald, Chris Dolan's story of a Motherwell woman who became known as the Scots Scarlet Pimpernel for her exploits during the conflict. Tickets are available from 8:30am on June 22, and can be purchased at box offices in the city or online, at www.edbookfest.co.uk

Six of the best:

Aeronwy Thomas

Through a child's eye she recalls the chaos of living with her father, Dylan Thomas, while he was at the height of his creative powers, and in the midst of Under Milk Wood

Henning Mankell

Sweden's finest crime writer has sealed a worldwide reputation with his greatest creation, Kurt Wallander. Fans will divide between those who discovered the great detective before or after Kenneth Branagh's weary account in the BBC's Bafta-winning serialisation

Sebastian Coe

Never one to bury his light under a bushel, Sebastian Coe's new book is entitled The Winning Mind. Olympic gold medallist, Tory politician and London Games supremo, Coe demonstrates that there are no shortcuts to success

Kate Atkinson

An opening day event with one of Edinburgh's finest. Atkinson's creation, Private Investigator Jackson Brodie returns in When Will There Be Good News

Griff Rhys Jones

Recently explored his own susceptibility to anger in a TV documentary but arrives in Edinburgh with a more peaceful demeanour. Jones' event explores Britain's most beautiful rivers and their place in the nation's soul

Michael Mansfield, QC

The title of his book says it all - The Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer. Mansfield has taken on some of the best know cases in recent criminal history, from Bloody Sunday to Jean Charles de Menezes, and speaks with all the confidence and modesty of a natural-born pleader

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