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!

3 thoughts on “Islay Book Festival: 2021 update

  1. Such a shame, but understandable. I attended a lot of online events last year and all were good, but you are right that it is a very cluttered landscape and of course the joy is in being there together. Am longing to get back. Well done last year and good luck in coming years.

  2. A good decision, but you will be much missed!! Thank you for including Philip Reeve and me in the festival a couple years ago, we enjoyed it so much. xx

  3. Such a shame, I felt sure last year that all would be well by the end of summer 2021 but not now. The 2022 festival will indeed be joyous!!

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