Events for youngsters at StAnza poetry festival

Mermaids and messages in bottles are on the programme for young poetry fans at this year’s StAnza Festival. StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival is serving up a treat to young poetry fans with this year’s dedicated children’s programme. StAnza has always featured events for younger audiences from readings by children’s authors to staged performances and…

Read More

Scotland’s poetry festival celebrates Gaelic language

StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, is celebrating the Gaelic language through a number of events and readings at this year’s annual festival. StAnza’s 2020 programme includes a Gaelic Writers Showcase, with readings from Deborah Moffatt, Eòghan Stiùbhart, Sandy NicDhomhnaill Jones and Niall O’Gallagher, celebrating the breadth of talent writing in Gaelic today. The Green Plain…

Read More

Second series for the Big Scottish Book Club

BBC Scotland’s The Big Scottish Book Club is getting bigger in 2020. The series had a debut run on the channel in late 2019 with four episodes. IWC, a Banijay Group company, has now been commissioned to make another eight hour-long episodes for a second series of the arts show, The Big Scottish Book Club,…

Read More

Outlander author recalls her favourite Scots locations

Outlander author Diana Gabaldon says she was ‘enchanted’ by Inverness on her first visit to the city and could see herself living there, in an exclusive video by VisitScotland released to mark the premiere of Outlander: Season 5. The writer, who hails from Arizona in the USA, recalls her visit to the capital of the…

Read More

Scot’s persistence led to talking book recording

A Scot’s persistence has resulted in RNIB Scotland recording an audio version of a favourite book. Aberdour resident Matthew Nicholson (25), a wheelchair user, has cerebral palsy and he has sight problems. Whilst he can watch the Doctor’s adventures on television, he relies on the talking books produced by the charity RNIB to enjoy them…

Read More

10 great Scottish writers and their renowned work

There are numerous renowned writers all over the world, and we can get lost in a sea of novels, poems and other great works that have made their great marks in the literary world. Here in this blog article I have highlighted 10 great Scottish writers who have graced literature. In this article, I have…

Read More

Scots children choose Bookbug Picture Book winner

The Scottish Book Trust has revealed the winner of the 2020 Bookbug Picture Book Prize is The Station Mouse by Meg McLaren, published by Anderson Press. More than 13,000 children across Scotland cast their votes for the award online. The award is run by Scottish Book Trust, the national charity changing lives through reading and…

Read More

Scottish New Writers Award recipients revealed

The Scottish Book Trust has announced the 13 recipients of the New Writers Award, which is supported by Creative Scotland. Since 2009 Scottish Book Trust, the national charity transforming lives through reading and writing, has supported over 100 creative individuals through the New Writers Awards. The New Writers Awards, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last…

Read More

When Burns became the talk of the capital

Robert Burns arrived unknown in Edinburgh in 1786, but within days the ‘Ploughman Poet’ was the talk of the town. This colourful guide to Burns’ associations with the city chronicles the places he visited and people he met. With easy-to-follow routes through Edinburgh arranged by the people and places who influenced the Bard, this is…

Read More

Bringing seaweed into every day cooking

Most of us have eaten food containing seaweed, but few of us will have actually cooked with it, something that BBC Masterchef finalist Fiona Bird is looking to change. Living in the Hebrides, Bird sources the finest natural produce for all of her recipes. The book combines Bird’s foraging skills with her imaginative recipes to…

Read More