Colonsay book festival line-up

Colonsay Book Festival has announced the core line-up for its 2024 Festival.

The first raft of award-winning writers and authors appearing at this “wee gem of a festival on a jewel of an island” coming on April 27 and 28 next year are confirmed to include Victoria Bennett whose debut memoir, All My Wild Mothers, was published in 2023. Living in Orkney, her writing has previously received a Northern Debut Award, a Northern Promise Award, the Andrew Waterhouse Award, and has been longlisted for the Penguin WriteNow programme and the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for under-represented voices.

Others in the line-up include Scottish novelist Graeme Macrae Burnet whose latest book Case Study  was longlisted for the Booker Prize and included in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022. His Bloody Project was shortlisted for the Booker, the LA Times Book of the Year and won the Saltire Prize. Graeme is also the author of the French-set Georges Gorski trilogy. His work has been translated into over twenty languages.

More programme details will be released in the run-up.

Early-bird tickets for what promises to be a stimulating, engaging and thought-provoking weekend go on sale as from today.

Richard Irvine, Co-Director of the event, said: “As the Colonsay Book Festival moves into its second decade we are delighted that we continue to attract such a strong and diverse range of voices.

“The Festival is a unique opportunity to hear an entertaining anthology of authors talk about their work and their lives over a relaxing weekend.

“Include a walk on one of Colonsay’s unspoilt beaches, dinner at the hotel or a drink in the island pub, and it’s easy to see why this is such a hugely enjoyable event for visitors, authors, and locals alike.”

He added: “Tickets are on sale now, with a special early bird rate available until the end of February 2024. You can keep up to date with all our news on our website and via Twitter and Facebook.”

Now in its eleventh year, this annual Hebridean literary celebration has carved a unique niche in Scotland’s ever-expanding book festival calendar since its launch in 2012.

The two-day event – dubbed a “literary lock-in” – is conceived and produced entirely by the island’s residents and has previously featured such distinguished writers, poets and authors as Val McDermid, Andrew Greig, Mhairi Hedderwick, AL Kennedy, Jackie Kay, Janice Galloway, Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and Andrew O’Hagan, to name but a few.

Also appearing at next year’s festival is Eimear McBride whose first novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing took nine years to find a publisher and subsequently received a number of awards, including the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, and the Goldsmiths Prize. Her second novel The Lesser Bohemians won the 2017 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and her third novel Stange Hotel was published to critical acclaim in 2020. In a 2018 Times Literary Supplement poll of 200 critics, academics, and fiction writers, McBride was named one of the ten best British and Irish novelists writing today.

Prize-winning Scottish poet and author Michael Pedersen, also the Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh, is among the line up, as is  E. S. Thomson whose work has been longlisted for the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger, and shortlisted for the Saltire Prize, the Scottish Arts Council First Book Award and the William McIlvanney Crime Book of the Year Award. She has a PhD in the social history of medicine, and tries to fit as much medical history into her books as possible.

Tickets for the 2024 Colonsay Book Festival are available from here www.colonsaybookfestival.com

Capion: Prize-winning Scottish poet and author Michael Pedersen is in the 2024 Colonsay Book Festival line-up
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