Plans are now in full swing for the 2023 Tarbert Book Festival to be held at Stonefield Castle Hotel on Saturday November 25, with this year’s event having a strong outdoors theme to it.
The authors attending this year are Jane Smith, wildlife author and illustrator; Dougie Strang, author of The Bone Cave: A Journey Through Myth And Memory; Kerri Andrews, author of Wanderers: A History Of Women Walking; and James Crawford, author of Wild History: Journeys Into Lost Scotland.
Lesley Taylor, one of the festival organisers, said: “The original ethos (of the festival) was to get people into the village at the tail end of the year.
“It’s a great opportunity for people to come along and meet the authors.
“It is a great opportunity for Christmas presents and it reminds people in the village that Stonefield is there.”
Wildlife author and illustrator Jane Smith wrote and illustrated Wild Island, a Year in the Hebrides, a book about the RSPB’s work on Oronsay.
Based in Tayvallich, she also writes articles for conservation magazines and has contributed to many books about art and wildlife.
Smith was elected a member of the Society Of Wildlife Artists in 2015, the year in which she received the Birdwatch/Swarovski Artist of the Year award.
She has also been the recipient of the Birds Illustrated Printmakers Award (2008), RSPB Award (2012), Birdscapes Conservation Through Art Award (2016), and the Nature in Print Award (2019).
She trained as a zoologist, and for 10 years made wildlife films, winning an Emmy for cinematography.
The Bone Cave author Dougie Strang is a writer, storyteller and performer whose work is inspired by the Scottish landscape.
Born and brought up in Glasgow, he studied folklore at Edinburgh University, and has lived and worked in numerous places, including Iona, Portugal and New Zealand.
He has created and directed work for numerous festivals and events and is a core member of the Dark Mountain Project, the international network of writers, artists, scientists and others whose work addresses current social and environmental crises.
The Bone Cave is a vivid account of a journey – mostly on foot – through the Scottish Highlands which follows a series of folktales and myths to the places in which they are set.
Kerri Andrews’ Wanderers: A History Of Women Walking, is a book about 10 women who, over the past 300 years “have found walking essential to their sense of themselves, as people and as writers”.
In a series of intimate portraits, the book traces their footsteps, from 18th-century parson’s daughter Elizabeth Carter to modern walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed.
For these women, walking was an important part of their lives, whether it was hiking for miles across the Highlands like Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, or pacing novels into being as Virginia Woolf did.
James Crawford, author of Wild History: Journeys Into Lost Scotland, is a writer and broadcaster and presenter of BBC One’s Scotland from the Sky.
His first major book, Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings, was shortlisted for the Saltire Literary Award for best non-fiction.
His other books include Who Built Scotland: 25 Journeys in Search of a Nation, Scotland’s Landscapes and The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World.
In 2019 he was named as the Archive and Records Association’s first ‘Explore Your Archives’ Ambassador’.
Tickets for the festival can be obtained online.