Announcement: Islay Book Festival 2020 will take place from 27th to 30th August. Our line-up will be announced in March, with the full programme due to go live in June. We’ll see you on Islay!
News
Charity whisky auction for Down’s Syndrome Association
Many of you may know Orla, Islay Book Festival’s youngest volunteer whose principal role is to charm the authors! Orla is a very cute three-year-old, and she also happens to have Down’s Syndrome.
At this year’s festival, Orla worked her magic again and managed to schmooze Ian Rankin into signing a couple of whisky bottles for our raffle (not that she drinks them herself!). The winner of the raffle prize has kindly offered to auction it off as a charity bottle in aid of Down’s Syndrome Association, and you can find it listed at Royal Mile Whisky Auctions, one of Edinburgh’s online auction sites.
Continue reading “Charity whisky auction for Down’s Syndrome Association”A dram with Ian Rankin: Islay Book Festival special event unveiled
Ian Rankin is to discuss the role whisky has played in his work and life at this summer’s Islay Book Festival, organisers announced on Friday as tickets for a special event at Laphroaig Distillery went on sale.
In the atmospheric setting of the 200-year-old distillery’s Filling Store, Rankin will be chatting to leading whisky writer Dave Broom about his passion for single malt and how he passed it on to his most famous creation, Inspector John Rebus.
Continue reading “A dram with Ian Rankin: Islay Book Festival special event unveiled”The Sound of the Hours: An Interview with Karen Campbell
Scots novelist Karen Campbell made her name with the Anna Cameron series of police novels before publishing two critically acclaimed contemporary dramas: Rise, set against the backdrop of the 2014 independence referendum, and the refugee story This is Where I Am.
Now the graduate of Glasgow University’s Creative Writing Masters programme has turned her hand to historical fiction with The Sound of the Hours, a powerful tale set in the final stages of World War II around Barga, the Tuscan hill town to which many Scots Italians can trace their roots.
Published in July by Bloomsbury, Campbell’s latest work tells the story of Frank Chapel, one of the black American “Buffalo Soldiers” who played a pivotal but long-underplayed role in the liberation of Italy, and Vittoria Guidi, a young Scottish-Italian woman caught in the middle of an occupied town and a divided family.
Karen, who will be talking about her new novel at this year’s Islay Book Festival, spoke to the festival’s Angus MacKinnon about how her latest work came about and how it fits into her eclectic writing career.
Continue reading “The Sound of the Hours: An Interview with Karen Campbell”Opportunity for an international writer-in-residence working in Scottish Gaelic
We have some amazing news! Islay Book Festival has been awarded an international writer-in-residence grant by the British Council, and for the International Year of Indigenous Languages we’ve decided to use it to form a key part of our Gaelic programme for this year’s festival (29th August to 1st September).
The successful applicant will be offered a two-week funded residency on the beautiful island of Islay in the second half of August 2019. During their stay on Scotland’s famous whisky isle, the resident will work on a creative project with our schools and a number of local partners, as well as contribute their own work as part of our book festival programme and take part in a Gaelic cultural celebration.
Continue reading “Opportunity for an international writer-in-residence working in Scottish Gaelic”