Unveiling our 2023 programme!

The Islay Book Festival committee members have been busy bees in the last few months, and we are so very happy to unveil our 2023 programme!

This year’s festival, including school and children’s events, will take place from Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 September.

Our general programme at the Gaelic College will kick off on Friday 8 September for a special evening with the Hebridean Baker, sponsored by Jura Distillery. Expect Gaelic singing, stories, recipes, a cocktail demonstration, and even a baking competition!

On Saturday, Kapka Kassabova will start the day off with an event fittingly sponsored by The Botanist around her stunning new book Elixir, which focuses on the wild plant gatherers of the valley of the Mesta in her native Bulgaria.

The next speaker will bring us back closer to our shores. Angus Peter Campbell will talk about his new novel in English, Electricity, a beautiful ode to island life, as well as tell us what it was like to translate George Orwell’s Animal Farm into the Gaelic Tuathanas nan Creutairean.

The afternoon will see us move on to poetry as Gerda Stevenson reads from her latest collection, Tomorrow’s Feast, which centres on the legacy faced by the next generation.

After poetry, romance will be in the spotlight as the Scottish queen of ‘Feel Good Fiction’, Jenny Colgan, presents The Summer Skies, her new escapist stand-alone novel set in the Scottish islands.

And to wrap up this busy day, what could be better than a fascinating Tartan Noir panel? Marisa Haetzman, writing under the pseudonym Ambrose Parry with husband Chris Brookmyre, will be in conversation with Sarah Smith, to chat about their respective historical fictions, Voices of the Dead and Hear No Evil.

On Sunday, Alan Warner will take us on a famous Hebridean journey in Scottish history as he discusses Nothing Left to Fear from Hell, his latest short novel about Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escape after the Battle of Culloden.

Chitra Ramaswamy will follow with what promises to be a moving event about her book Homelands, inspired by her friendship with Holocaust survivor Henry Wuga, who escaped Nazi Germany as part of the Kindertransport to settle in Glasgow.

Our Sunday afternoon session will be all about palaeontology, as Steve Brusatte presents his two popular science books The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, drawing from the fossil discoveries Steve and his team have made on the Isle of Skye over the past decade.

Alongside this exciting general programme, Gerda Stevenson will run a poetry workshop at Ardbeg Distillery on Sunday afternoon (booking essential as places are limited), and there will also be two children’s events: Anne and Steve Brusatte will visit MYFOS in Port Ellen on Thursday for an after-school session around their picture book Dugie the Dinosaur, while Philip Reeve will present his Utterly Dark middle-grade series at the Mactaggart Leisure Centre on Sunday afternoon.

Our varied school programme will include sessions with Lari Don, Sarah McIntyre, Philip Reeve, Anne and Steve Brusatte, and Angus Peter Campbell for a visit to the Gaelic Medium Unit. Alan Warner, Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve will also visit the students of Islay High School. 

And Gerda Stevenson will bring poetry and songs to the residents of Gortanvogie Care Home.

Mindful of the cost of living crisis, we’ve kept the price of tickets for our general programme low at £5 (£3.50 concession) per event, and, for best value, you can also purchase a festival pass for £30 (£20). Children’s events at MYFOS and the Mactaggart Leisure Centre are free. 

For more information about the individual events and to find out exact times and book tickets, click here.

We hope to see many of you join us in September for a big celebration of words and stories!

Support us with Argyll Community Lottery

We’ve launched an Argyll Community Lottery page! As a charity, the Islay Book Festival relies solely on funding from our sponsors and the generosity of the public. You can now support us in a fun way by purchasing Argyll Community Lottery tickets here: https://www.argyllcommunitylottery.co.uk/support/islay-book-festival.

Tickets cost only £1, with a draw every Saturday night. Each ticket has a 1 in 50 chance to win, with prizes ranging from free extra tickets to £25,000. When someone chooses us as their cause, 50% goes to us, 20% to admin costs, 20% to prizes and the remaining 10% is shared between all the other good causes registered with the lottery, so it means it benefits other local charities as well.

We hope many of you will choose to support us this way, and wish you good luck in the lottery. Gun robh math agaibh!

Revealing our 2023 line-up!

Our committee has been busy putting together an exciting line-up for this year’s Islay Book Festival on 8-10 September, and we couldn’t wait to share the names of our guest authors with you ahead of the busy season.

Coinneach MacLeod, aka The Hebridean Baker, will open the festivities with his stories and recipes.

Tartan noir will be well represented, with the presence of Ambrose Parry and Sarah Smith.

Jenny Colgan will come to argue that Scotland, and its islands in particular, are a great setting for romance, not only for murder.

Multi-talented Angus Peter Campbell will present his latest novel in English, chat about translating George Orwell into Gaelic, and possibly share a bit about his acting career.

Gerda Stevenson will put poetry on the programme, while Alan Warner will regale us with the Hebridean adventures of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

British and European history will feature prominently in Chitra Ramaswamy’s event, while Kapka Kassabova will tell us what the Bulgarian forests hold in common with the Scottish Highlands.

Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte will talk about the history of life on Earth, and be joined by his wife Anne to visit Islay schools with their picture book inspired by the Isle of Skye’s fossil finds. Star storyteller Lari Don will undoubtedly delight pupils’ imagination. And last but not least, super duo Sarah McIntyre & Philip Reeve will be back to the island to present their new series.

Needless to say, we have a fantastic programme in the works for you, and we’ll be back soon with more detailed information about all our authors’ books and individual events. Stay tuned!

Donald S Murray talks peatlands

Donald S Murray is the author of two critically-acclaimed novels set on his native Isle of Lewis. His debut, As The Women Lay Dreaming, which deals with the aftermath of the tragic sinking of the Iolaire, a ship carrying island soldiers home from World War I, won the Paul Torday Memorial Prize.

His latest work, In a Veil of Mist, which The Times described as a “moving portrait of a place and its people,” is set in 1950s Lewis against the backdrop of Operation Cauldron, the secret testing of biological weapons on animals on board a ship anchored in the Minch.

Donald is also a poet and a prolific producer of non-fiction writing, much of it dealing with the nature and cultural heritage of the Hebrides. In 2018 he came to the Islay Book Festival with his book The Dark Stuff: Stories from the Peatlands and he’ll be joining us again via Zoom on 10 June to share some of his latest poetry while exploring how peat landscapes and the peat-cutting tradition have given his work the flavour of an Islay whisky.

As a taster for that event, part of the Islay and Jura Peatlands Project being run by the Islay Natural History Trust, the festival’s Angus MacKinnon caught up with Donald for a chat about all things peat, his latest projects and life under lockdown.

Continue reading “Donald S Murray talks peatlands”

Islay Book Festival: 2021 update

We have reluctantly decided to cancel this year’s event due to the continuing uncertainty over travel and other restrictions linked to the Covid pandemic.

We are not confident of being able to hold a physical festival towards the end of the summer and so have decided to cut our losses and cancel now.

And while we learnt a lot from our online programme last year, and are incredibly grateful for everyone’s contributions and support from across the globe, our feeling is that live events on the island are really what our festival is all about and we don’t want to move too far away from that.

We also feel there is no point trying to compete in a now very cluttered digital landscape.

However, we have decided instead to try and organise some one-off book events this year to support a couple of local publications coming out in May and June respectively. These events will most likely be held online over the summer months.

In the meantime, we’ll be working away in the background on a future strategy for the festival and in particular to try to secure longer-term funding for our activities. We look forward to coming back with a bang in 2022!

Two weeks left to watch our 2020 festival videos

A lot of conversations are being had at the moment about how long author videos should be kept online. Will anyone value the content if it’s available indefinitely? Would anyone pay to attend an online event if they can already watch the same author on YouTube for free?

We thought we’d take a stance and remove access to our 2020 festival events at the end of January. We want to encourage people to value  online author events as much as they would physical events, and we want to be fair to authors, audiences and other festivals hoping to engage online. This is our way of committing to a level playing field.

Please make the most of the next two weeks and catch up on last year’s wee digital Islay Book Festival while you can! You can find them all here.

AGM announced

The Islay Book Festival AGM will take place at 12 noon on Saturday 6 February. This is a delayed AGM from 2020, as due to various difficulties caused by Covid, we were unable to hold it before the end of the year. This AGM will therefore present on our 2019-20 activity, but will also include a summary of our 2020-21 activity so far to keep everyone up to date.

The AGM will be conducted on Zoom and is open to members and residents of Islay and Jura. If you would like to attend, please register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpdOGtqjMvGdwdz_3dmHHPjjgFPYkn1uTE

Please do just get in touch if you have any queries or if you would like to attend but are not currently a member: hello[at]islaybookfestival.co.uk

Islands facing “calamitous” Covid fallout

Islay and the rest of the Highlands and Islands are facing a “calamitous” fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, one of Scotland’s leading historians has warned.

Speaking to The Ileach ahead of his participation in this year’s online Islay Book Festival, Professor Jim Hunter said the collapse of tourism under lockdown underlined the need for new thinking on how to diversify island economies and unlock their full potential.

Continue reading “Islands facing “calamitous” Covid fallout”

Literary stars to deliver online tonic for troubled times

Angus MacKinnon previews this month’s online Islay Book Festival.

Scots Makar Jackie Kay has agreed to open this month’s Islay Book Festival in a welcome filip for the event, which is being held online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alexander McCall Smith, the bestselling author famed for his uplifting storytelling and optimistic view of the world, will also help deliver a literary tonic for troubled times.

The big names’ support was described as ‘fabulous news’ by festival chair Isla Rosser-Owen. ‘Alexander McCall Smith is a global bestseller and Jackie always has something insightful and interesting to say. We’re really looking forward to hosting them and of course all the other writers taking part in our first digital festival.’

Real-time poetry writing with Kornel Kossuth, a children’s ‘How to Draw a Dragon’ session with Kate Leiper, and music from Islay Sessions regular Gráinne Brady and The Bookshop Band are also on the menu for the 27–30 August event.

Continue reading “Literary stars to deliver online tonic for troubled times”

Our Hebridean offering to the digital landscape

Our chair, Isla Rosser-Owen, introduces this year’s digifest, which she calls “our own unique, informal Hebridean offering to the digital landscape”. As well as highlighting some of the events she’s most looking forward to, Isla also talks a bit about why we decided to go digital this year, saying that “just because we’re a small festival on an island off the south-west coast of Scotland does not mean that we don’t have a valid contribution [to make], it does not mean that we can’t have a seat at the digital table too”.

Watch the full announcement below, and while you’re at it, please do subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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