“Every poet is ideally the deaf Beethoven”. This double-billing was both welcome and apt for Michael Hulse, the distinguished poet, editor, translator and educator. Born of a German mother and an English father, he probed an identity and a “complex legacy”, acknowledging that the post-colonial weight of the British Empire was no less difficult than Read More
One was immediately given some idea of Lesley Riddoch’s character when the audience was told that she arrived straight from a hospital visit some 40 miles away in Kirkcaldy. In fact, such was Riddoch’s warm humour and enthusiasm in the session that it was easy to forget that you were listening to one of the Read More
As we approached the final event of Dundee Literary Festival 2013, we charged our glasses and toasted 40 years of Canongate. Originally founded by Stephanie Wolf Murray, Canongate was brought back from the brink in 1994 by current publisher and managing director, Jamie Byng, who is now still at the helm of the company. At Read More
“Research is the fascinating bit [of writing historical fiction] but you have to get rid of a lot of it.” Clearly, a lot of what was not used for the writing of Unfashioned Creatures, was used during the book launch in what felt more like a lecture than a promotional event. Whilst the “lecture” was Read More
Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, the previous event ran over the allotted time and the session with Sarah Hall and Ruth Thomas was delayed by twenty minutes. It was unfortunate not only because waiting around is the last thing anyone enjoys doing, but because the discussion hosted by Peggy Hughes, the Dundee Literary Festival director, was Read More
Estás sola y nadie te mira. Eres la reina, bella como la luna envuelta en la seda de su noche. Estás sola y te vas a morir./ ’You’re alone and nobody looks at you. You’re the queen, beautiful as the moon wrapped up in the silk of her night. You’re alone and you’re going to Read More
Jenni Fagan’s first novel, The Panopticon, was an immediate hit, not only in Scotland, but worldwide – it was even chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her Book Club. Perhaps this latter fact isn’t so surprising, since the tough-childhood subject-matter is right up Oprah’s street, so to speak. The novel is set in a secure children’s Read More
This was the launch of Whaleback City, an anthology of poems inspired by the city of Dundee and its surroundings. The book, the last to be published by Dundee University Press, contains poems spanning five centuries – many of them written by poets from Dundee – and is dedicated to singer songwriter Michael Marra, a Read More
“At any given time, I have two things on my mind: a theme that interests me and a problem of verbal form, meter, diction, etc. The theme looks for the right form: the form looks for the right theme. When the two come together, I am able to start writing.” W.H. Auden A member of Read More
Following another of his periods in the wilderness, William McIlvanney is once again a name to conjure with. When he appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2011, McIlvanney vented his frustration that he could not get a contract for his latest book. The publishers “wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole”. Two years Read More