StAnza brings poetry to Fife for another festival

StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, has revealed a host of prize-winning poets among next year’s line-up as it launches its core festival programme for 2020. Festival director Eleanor Livingstone said: “‘It’s always a pleasure to reveal the core programme for each StAnza festival and we’re delighted that next year’s line-up will be showcasing some of…

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Celebrating the Gaelic experience

A forgotten and marginalised culture, the Gaelic experience is exposed as it was, is and all it might be. Written in both English and Gaelic, Shore to Shore, is an anthology of Gaelic raps, secular poems and aphorisms artistically and vividly bringing the Gaelic world to life. Descendants of Gaels now reside in every corner…

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Finding the greater truth in a fascinating book

Jellyfish is a sparkling and powerful collection of writing. Janice Galloway takes on David Lodge’s assertion – ‘Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life’s the other way round’ – and scent-marks her multi-layered fiction with what she believes to be the greater truth. Razor sharp tales of two of…

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The Big Scottish Book Club discusses memoir

The second meeting of the Big Scottish Book Club is taking place this weekend. The Big Scottish Book Club is a new four-part TV show, with the second episode due to be shown on Sunday, 17 November, and hosted by writer Damian Barr Each week, Damian interviews the biggest names in fiction, non-fiction and poetry…

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Guest editor of Best Scottish Poems announced

The Scottish Poetry Library has announce that rising star Roseanne Watt is the guest editor of the SPL’s annual online anthology Best Scottish Poems 2019. Best Scottish Poems is an annual online anthology of the year’s best poems written by a Scottish poet or poet based in Scotland. Each year the anthology is edited by…

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Shortlists for Scotland’s national book awards

The Saltire Society announced the shortlists for the 2019 Saltire Literary Awards, as well as two brand new prizes, at an event in Edinburgh this evening. This year, for the first time, the Saltire Society will be awarding a prize for Scottish Book Cover and a special Award for Lifetime Achievement. The winners of all…

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Boutique luxury brand launches Stay Human Project

The Kimpton Stay Human Project has been launched in Edinburgh’s Kimpton Charlotte Square and Glasgow’s Blythswood Square for the first time. With the boutique luxury brand, guests are asked to forge meaningful ties with each other by working together on the in-room loom, co-creating a unique tapestry. The combined effort will be completed over a…

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John Stephens-Orr – the snapper to the stars

In the 1950s and 60s, having your portrait taken by dapper snapper John Stephens-Orr bestowed real social cachet. David McNeil shares his experiences of working with the Scottish society photographer. In 1963 I was a 17-year-old trainee commercial artist with an advertising agency in Glasgow. The boss called me in one day and told me…

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Successes at inaugural Scots Language Awards

The first annual Scots Language Awards were held on Friday night. Hosted by Alistair Heather and Frieda Morrison, it saw nominees and the audience from right across Scotland head to Glasgow to celebrate the Scots Language, before enjoying live performances from MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards 2018 Singer of The Year Iona Fyfe, musician,…

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Wigtown Book Festival starts later this week

Scotland’s National Book Town is gearing up for a friendly invasion of book lovers when the annual Wigtown Book Festival gets underway this week. Authors and authorities of every kind will be talking about a multitude of subjects including new evidence about the Viking Age Galloway Hoard – one of the greatest discoveries of buried…

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