'Extraordinary life experiences' to be shared at Ullapool Book Festival as event enters 15th year
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A WESTER Ross book festival is set to open its fifteenth chapter later this month with a stellar round-up of guests from around the world.
Ullapool Book Festival runs from May 10 to 12 and has already sold out several of its sessions.
Honorary president Chris Dolan, author, playwright and poet, is thrilled at the prospect of the event: "Just look at the programme – poets, historians, journalists; youngsters and the more mature, from Canada and the Gaeltacht, Palestine, from city and croft. People with extraordinary life experiences, willing to share their stories and thoughts, fears and hopes, within this – however fleeting – little community.”
Already sold out are sessions by Melanie Reid, Sally Magnusson, Michael Pedersen, Hollie McNish and Withered Hand.
But organisers say there are still tickets available "for much that will delight, excite, stimulate".
Once again sessions with journalists have been selling well. There are still a few tickets left for Neil Mackay and David Pratt in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Ruth Wishart.
Neil Mackay, former editor of the Sunday Herald and now writer at large for the Herald and the Herald on Sunday added to his numerous past awards by winning Columnist of the Year at last week’s Scottish Press Awards. Among many accolades for David Pratt’s work he has been named Journalist of the Year in the Scottish Press Awards, twice been Reporter of the Year and twice Feature Writer of the Year.
As well as writers from all over Scotland, UBF has authors from overseas. Penny Johnson was born in America but has lived in Ramallah, Palestine for many years. She will talk about Companions in Conflict, in which she explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a surprising lens: the animals trying to survive in occupied hotspots.
German writer Volker Kutscher started his career as the editor of a daily newspaper. Today he works as a writer in Cologne. Kutscher’s historical crime novels about Gereon Rath and his exploits in late Weimar Republic Berlin have been published in many countries and have sold over one million copies worldwide. Babylon Berlin, the start of the award-winning series, is now an internationally acclaimed TV show.
The book festival’s annual Canadian guest this year in Kathleen Winter. She was born in the industrial northeast of England, spent many years in Newfoundland, and now lives in Montreal. Her novel Annabel, published in 2010 became a No1 best-seller in Canada and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Award, and the Orange Prize. It won the 2011 Thomas Head Raddall Award for Atlantic Fiction. Her non-fiction book Boundless tells of her journey across the legendary Northwest Passage and is a haunting and powerful story. Her latest novel Lost In September was a finalist for the 2017 Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
The full programme can be seen on www.ullapoolbookfestival.co.uk.
