Gearing up for Ullapool Book Festival
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The programme for Ullapool Book Festival is being revealed tomorrow, with tickets going on sale next Friday.
Among the guests is well known presenter, journalist and author, Sally Magnusson.
The 15th festival will be held from Friday, May 10, to Sunday, May 12, in Ullapool Village Hall.
Among the other guests are novelists Angus Peter Campbell and Robert Alan Jamieson, and Malachy Tallack, poets Jo Shapcott and Roseanne Watt, and journalists Neil Mackay and David Pratt. Melanie Reid will be talking about her memoir The World I Fell Out Of.
Poets Michael Pedersen and Hollie McNish join forces with cult music maker Withered Hand for a unique collective outing. The three will share their own work and some thoughts on their dear friend, lost giant, the late Scott Hutchison. As a four piece, they appeared a couple of times as the Cold Turkey collective, whilst Pedersen and Hutchison had been due to perform together at Ullapool Book Festival in 2018.
On Saturday morning the four shortlisted authors for the Highland Book Prize – Neil Ansell, Andrew Miller, Judith Ross Napier, and Malachy Tallack – will read in a showcase session.
And on Saturday evening the winner of the second Highland Book Prize, presented by The Highland Society of London, will be announced by the judges. This will be followed by a chaired session with the winning writer.
Most of the festival guests live in Scotland but the committee has continued its tradition of also having writers from outwith the UK. This year they are from Kathleen Winter (Canada), Volker Kutscher (Germany) and Penny Johnson (Palestine). In addition, the director of HeadRead, the Tallinn Literary Festival (Estonia) has been invited to Ullapool and the book festival hope this may result in some development of cultural links between the North West Highlands and the eastern Baltic.
