Writers booked for west coast festival
George Gunn, Ewan Morrison and three members of the Wick Writers Group – Mandy Beattie, Donna Booth and Pat Heath – will be among the guests at the event from May 10-12.
The festival features an array of talent from emerging young authors to best selling writers and poets.
Gunn was born in Caithness and lived and worked in Aberdeen and Edinburgh before returning north. He now lives in Thurso. He has written over 40 plays for stage, radio, schools and community groups and has published several collections of poetry, the most recent being Atlantic Forest in 2008.
In 1992, he set up The Grey Coast Theatre Company and was its artistic director until the company folded in 2009. He is a creative writing tutor at North Highland College and has just finished a residency with the Mackay Country Community Trust in Sutherland.
He is working on a prose book about Caithness entitled The Province Of The Cat and his next book of poems, Waiting For The Wave, is to be published shortly.
Ewan Morrison, who comes from Wick, is a Glasgow-based award-winning writer. His writing has been described as modern, insightful, darkly humorous and focused on the forces that shape our private lives.
He won the 2012/13 Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Writer of the Year Award and was the winner of the 2012 Not the Booker Prize. He was also a finalist in the Saltire Book of the Year Award, and the Creative Scotland Writer of the Year Award in 2012. In addition, he has been a finalist for three BAFTA Awards as writer and director and was the winner of a Royal Television Society Award in 2002.
Mandy Beattie’s poetry is inspired by her Caithness roots, its big skies, sea and open spaces, although people and social issues are featured too.
Donna Booth is a teacher and therapist based in Caithness. She returned to the far north after years working overseas while Pat Heath moved to Dunbeath two years ago and since getting involved in the writers group wants to write a play.
The Ullapool Book Festival will also be host to writers such as Jenni Fagan whose debut novel Panopticon last year won great critical acclaim. Other debut authors appearing are Wayne Price whose short story collection Furnace was nominated for the Saltire First Book of the Year 2012 and Allan Wilson whose short story collection Wasted in Love was shortlisted for The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award 2012.
Authors such as Ian Rankin, James Robertson, Zoe Strachan and poet Kathleen Jamie, who has just won the Costa Prize for Poetry, will also be there.
Tickets go on sale on Friday, March 22. Full details about the festival and the programme can be found on www.ullapoolbookfestival.co.uk