Chrissie Gittins, poet, playwright and short story writer, comes to An Tuireann, Portree, Isle of Skye for one night only on Wednesday, 14th September 2005 at 7.30pm. Tickets for the evening are £6.00, £3.00 concessions. There will be a chance to talk to Chrissie about her writing during the evening. This event will also celebrate the end of her tour for the Western Seaboard Highland Schools Project which takes her from Durness to Skye from the 31st of August to 14th September 2005 visiting 9 primary schools, Lochcarron library and finishing at Portree High School. The tour was funded by the Highland Council, the schools themselves and the Scottish Poetry Library (SPL).

Chrissie Gittins was born in Bury, Lancashire, and went to Newcastle University and Central St. Martin's School of Art. She made a living as an artist and teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her poems, short stories and poems for children have appeared in a wide range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies; several have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service; she has also written plays for Radio and has been commissioned to write Dinner in the Iguanodon Mould for R4 to be broadcast in 2006.

Her poetry has taken her to Springhill Hospice, Rochdale, Bangkok Patna School, Thailand and Belmarsh Prison, Thamesmead. In 2001 she was awarded an international fellowship at Hawthornden Castle. Her poems have been gathered together in the collection Armature: these are poems which open up like flower petals giving voice to the frail, the ill and confused; there are also poems that travel places: Spain, Italy, Skye. The last poems in the collection are poignant and careful observations about Thailand into which are threaded autobiographical glimpses that are evident throughout the poems in this book.

But there is wit too, and her sense of fun joyfully crawls across the pages of her collections of poetry for children: Now You See Me, Now You ... was shortlisted for the 2003 CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) poetry award and contains two poems which won the Belmont Poetry Prizes. She is a member of the Poetry Society's poetryclass training team for teachers.

So listen to and participate in poetry and words on 14th September if you can.

For further information contact Mark Goodwin, Research & Development Assistant 01478 613 306 exhibitions@antuireann.org.uk