There are more than 100 events from Thursday to Sunday, with guests including Joanna Lumley, Miles Jupp, Val McDermid, Jack Dee, Esme Young and Clive Myrie.
Festival director Alistair Moffat said they were delighted to be back.
The winner of this year’s £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction will also be announced.
It will be chosen from a shortlist of four books – Colm Toibin’s The Magician, Andrew Greig’s Rose Nicolson, Amanda Smyth’s Fortune and James Robertson’s News of the Dead.
Alice Tarbuck, literature officer with Creative Scotland, said it was great to see the festival return in a “hopeful celebration of the power of storytelling”.
