Short stories published in Gaelic and English win the Highland Book Prize
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Duncan Gillies’s collection of Gaelic and English short stories, Crann-Fìge/ Fig Tree, has won the 2022 Highland Book Prize.
The winner is awarded £2000 prize money and a week’s writing retreat at Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre.
Crann-Fìge/ Fig Tree is the fourth story collection by Duncan Gillies from Knockaird, in Ness, the northern tip of the Isle of Lewis.
Fig Tree is his first book in which Gaelic and English appear together, side by side.
At the awards ceremony on Tuesday night he read extracts from some of the stories in both Gaelic and English, when all four shortlisted writers talked about their books and read from them.
Duncan Gillies revealed in his conversation with Highland Book Prize coordinator Kirsteen Bell when she asked about the different locations in his collection, including Ness in Lewis, that he wouldn't have predicted his first story.
"I didn't expect to be writing Fig Tree, the story at the beginning. I am very fond of fig trees, I spent some of my life as a gardener. But I started the story and it took its own course."
Duncan then read the beginning of the story to the online audience.
Presented by the Highland Society of London, the winning title was announced at the end of the online award ceremony hosted by Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s Creative Writing Centre, from the hills above Loch Ness.
The audience enjoyed readings and discussions with Moniack Mhor's Kirsteen Bell and each of the authors: Ali Smith, for Companion Piece (Hamish Hamilton); Tony Davidson, for Confessions Of A Highland Art Dealer (Woodwose Books); Duncan Gillies, for Crann-Fìge/ Fig Tree (Acair Books), and Cynthia Rogerson, for WAH! Things I Never Told My Mother (Sandstone Press).
Crann-Fìge/ Fig Tree, published by Acair Books, was described by a member of the volunteer reading panel as “a book that explores memory, legacy, and the value of culture and language. The stories are lucid and more often than not offer an unshowy luminosity”.
The judging panel shared their comments on the winning title.
Peter Mackay said: “Donnchadh MacGillÌosa (Duncan Gillies) has long been one of the best short story writers in Gaelic. These stories show great psychological perspicuity, with a wonderfully light touch, and great understanding of what is important, how and why, in human lives, and especially how things might unexpectedly linger – and words gather individual meaning – over the course of years and decades. Crann-Fìge is a very strong collection, and a very deserving winner.”
Mark Wringe said: “Donnchadh MacGillÌosa (Duncan Gillies) has been known to Gaelic readers for many years as an exceptional writer, in whose hands the modern short story is reconstituted with colours and tones recognisable from an older narrative tradition, and yet defies categorisation. His stories are witty, deft and utterly distinctive. With his latest collection, in Gaelic with superbly artful translations, readers with no Gaelic can now immerse themselves in a Gaelic world when it was still a whole and complete entity. The melancholy is in knowing it is like that no more. The joy is in witnessing a fig-tree burst from the Lewis soil.”
Kapka Kassabova said: “These intimate parable-like stories embody what it means to belong in a place. They speak of love and extinction in the same breath. They brim with the truth and poigancy of a vanishing world – one where it is still possible to have an interior life that is at one with our environment."
The Highland Book Prize, established in 2017, celebrates the finest published work that recognises the rich talent, landscape, and cultural diversity of the Highlands.
The annual prize is open to work in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Presented by the Highland Society of London and facilitated by Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre, this literary prize aims to bring recognition to books created in or about the Highlands, and is open to books written about the Highlands & Islands; books written by residents of the Highlands & Islands; and writers who were born in the Highlands & Islands.
The William Grant Foundation provides funding to encourage public engagement with the Highland Book Prize. The Highland Society of London is a charity which exists to promote and support the traditions and culture of the Highlands of Scotland
More: www.highlandbookprize.org.uk
www.highlandsocietyoflondon.org
