This year's Black Isle Words Festival gives everyone an opportunity to meet and hear a number of well-known, popular writers.
Roger Hutchinson, author of the best-selling Calum's Road, opens the weekend on Friday 31st August at the Victoria Hall in Cromarty.
Roger Hutchinson worked in London in the 1970s on several magazines, including Time Out, before he moved to Skye to join the staff of the West Highland Free Press. Since 1987 he has been a prolific freelance writer and journalist. His previous books include Camanachd: A History of Shinty; Polly: The Story behind Whisky Galore; and a biography of James Boswell. The Soap Man, his account of Lord Leverhulme's experiments in the Long Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. He lives on Raasay.
The Festival Saturday kicks off with two workshops at the Cromarty Training Centre. One, on writing for radio, is conducted by Linda Cracknell, making a welcome return visit to Cromarty. Last year's festival-goers will recall her popular session on the short story. In this year's workshop she will be looking at how a fiction writer needs to adapt their skills and interests to write radio drama. Her own work includes original drama, abridgement and adaptation for Radio Four.
Linda won the Macallan/ Scotland on Sunday short-story competition in 1998, and her subsequent book of stories Life Drawing was published in 2000. She was writer-in-residence at Hugh MacDiarmid's cottage in Biggar from 2002 to 2005, and now she works as a freelance writer and teacher of creative writing. She says her workshop is open to aspiring writers at any level.
Running in parallel with Linda's workshop on the Saturday morning will be one by John Batty on the presentation skills writers will find useful in reading their work in public. John has worked as a director and teacher in community theatre in the Highlands since 1987. Also, he occasionally acts and has, from time to time, performed at poetry and storytelling events. In his workshop, he will look at the performing of a variety of texts from the actor's perspective. Participants will work on skills such as concentration, focus, imagination, character, voice projection and others needed to really put over a poem to an audience. Texts will be supplied by the tutor.
The Saturday morning concludes with a song lecture from Fiona Mackenzie, the Mairi Mhor Gaelic Song Fellow for Highland Council. Fiona has won many major prizes for singing, culminating in the Premier Award of An Comunn Gaidhealach Gold Medal in 2005. She won the title of BBC Scotland Traditional Music Personality in 2004 and was nominated for Best Gaelic Singer in 2006. The Festival session is devoted to the Skye songwriter so famous in the late-Victorian crofting movement who is commemorated in Fiona's job title.
Hamish Brown MBE is a professional writer, lecturer and photographer specialising in mountain and outdoor topics. In 1974 he completed ascents of the Munros in one trip, an expedition described in his book Hamish's Mountain Walk. Since then he has written many other books and articles. His love for the mountains of North Africa is the theme of his latest work, The Mountains Look On Marrakech, an account of an end-to-end trek of the Atlas Mountains. He talks about this in an illustrated lecture at Fortrose Theatre on the Festival Saturday.
Two figures familiar on the Highland literary scene - Angus Dunn and Ian Stephen - combine forces to present two workshops on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Angus has written poetry and short stories, and his novel Writing in the Sand was published last year. Ian is well known for his poetry, short stories and storytelling, not to mention his sailing exploits. They describe their two workshops as: Making a poem: make a poem with Angus, dismantle a poem with Ian; and Making fiction: finding the spark to make a story with Angus, looking at how a story works with Ian. Each workshop stands on its own but they can be attended as a 'package'.
The Saturday evening ceilidh at the Cromarty Training Centre is hosted once again by Janet MacInnes, the storyteller and poet from Alness. There will be music as well as stories and poems from the assembled guests, and this promises to be a gathering fully in the friendly, informal style established by its predecessors.
Keith Gray and Nicola Morgan are two of Scotland's most popular and acclaimed writers for teenagers. At Fortrose Library on the last morning of the Festival they interview each other about the tricky subject of writing for young people, before opening themselves to audience questions.
Writers from different backgrounds with different styles, they will put each other on the spot, with piercing questions about why they write for teenagers, and whether reading beats MySpace and MTV. Hear the thinking behind novels such as Keith's Malarkey and The Fearful, Nicola's book on the teenage brain, Blame My Brain, and her novels such as Fleshmarket. Meet and chat over refreshments at the end. For teenagers (11+) and adults.
The last session of the Festival is a talk in Cromarty on the Sunday afternoon by Peter Davidson, whose book The Idea of North stimulated great interest when it was published in November 2004. Peter is professor of renaissance studies at Aberdeen University. His interest in 'north' as a cultural concept was stimulated in part by wanting to understand the ways in which various artists and writers had made sense of the north, and in part by being moved himself by northern landscapes and townscapes.
Brochures with full details of all the Festival events can be found in libraries, bookshops and other outlets throughout the region. Details are also available on www.wordsinc.co.uk .
The Black Isle Words Festival is organised by Words Inc, a group of volunteers based in the area, with sponsorship from Highland 2007 and other bodies, and also with generous support from the local communities where it happens.
