Posts Tagged ‘writing’
StAnza festival returns with exciting new format
StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, has revealed headline names for the 2022 festival, including Scots Makar, Kathleen Jamie. Big names are due to perform at the 2022 festival as organisers prepare for a return to live performance, post-Covid. The annual event will be back in St Andrews next March with ambitious plans for a hybrid…
Read MoreThe fascinating rise of a Scots statesman
The eventful life and career of Sir John Malcolm, a distinguished combatant, statesman and man of letters who spent most of his life in India, has been a story little told in his native Scotland. An ambitious and bold man who left his impoverished beginnings as one of 17 children of a tenant farmer in…
Read MoreCask and Still Magazine Issue 3
Cask & Still’s third edition takes a journey into bourbon with comic genius Bernie Lubbers. The stand-up comic is also a bourbon ambassador and bluegrass musician. Our whisky bar of the issue takes us to the Flatiron Room in Manhattan, New York. We meet Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith, who, as well as…
Read MoreSpooky 19th century tales from a Scots writer
As Halloween approaches, we all like a little bit of a scare. Despite being a household name during the latter half of the 19th century, few today are aware of the thrilling tales of Margaret Oliphant, and yet they are ripe for rediscovery. From suspenseful hauntings to strange tales of afterlife and the emotional echoes…
Read MoreThe Glencairn Glass invites crime writers to enter short story comp
Are you an author with a murderous imagination, a crime that needs capturing or a deadly deed to document? Well here’s your chance … The Glencairn Glass – the world’s favourite whisky glass – and sponsor of the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime-writing prizes, is looking for crime short stories, launching the competition with…
Read MoreA gripping mystery full of historical facts
Original Death is the third book in Eliot Pattison’s colonial mystery series – following on from Bone Rattler and Eye Of The Raven. It sees exiled Scottish clan chief Duncan McCallum attempting to solve the murder of an entire village of Native Americans during the pre-revolutionary era. Pattison’s writing incorporates historical fact and is all…
Read MoreLost opportunities and a touching human story
From the very first page of this poetic novel, the reader can witness the story shimmer into life. Writing simultaneously in Gaelic and English, Campbell evokes the haunting beauty of the Western Highlands in this romantic tale of chance encounters and missed moments. When the narrator passes a girl on the staircase of a ferryboat,…
Read MoreA refreshing fictional take on Robert the Bruce
This hefty novel gives voice to the five sisters of Robert the Bruce, highlighting the challenges they faced as sisters of Scotland’s great hero. It is certainly refreshing to hear the female voice within history’s discourse of wars and battles that is so often dominated by men. The story begins with Isa, the eldest sister…
Read MoreAlternative past with Scotland under Nazi occupation
Few can write as evocatively of our country’s past as Alistair Moffat. Stepping away from his usual historical tomes, he reimagines WWII through this extraordinary piece of speculative fiction, taking you on a journey to investigate what might have been had Nazi Germany won the war. Set in a disturbing post-1945 world where German occupation…
Read MoreWin the chance to be published with the 2022 Kelpies Prize
This year’s Kelpies Prizes have opened, giving hopeful Scottish authors and illustrators of children’s books the chance to kickstart a career. The Kelpies Prize for Writing was launched in 2004, seeking to find the best new Scottish writing for children. The winner will receive a prize package including a mentorship with an experienced editorial and…
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