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- Wednesday 10 February Book Festival 2009 Annual Review available
- Friday 2 April Book Festival authors short-listed for Scottish writing awards
Elsewhere: New Writing Commissions
We have commissioned fifty authors to write short stories or essays, all on the theme of ‘Elsewhere’. Leading writers for adults and children from across the world have taken part and their wonderfully engaging and varied new writing is available for you to download here. Many of the authors have also recorded podcasts of their work which you can find in our audio gallery and on iTunes.
Supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund.
Elsewhere is Aways Waiting by William McIlvanney
A woman is ripped from her life of domestic banality by an unexpected knock on her front door.
Flotsam & Jetsam by Alan Bissett
With the cool surf nosing at her feet and the sky yawning blue, she felt dreamy and liquid, her imagination uncurling from the trap Glasgow had made for it...
Seven Questions about the Journey by Don Paterson
Why are we leaving in such unreadiness?... A new poem by Don Paterson is cause for celebration, and this one has been commissioned specially as part of our Elsewhere project of new writing.
The Elsewhere Genie by John Fardell
There was once an island which had only two inhabitants: an ogre, and his slave...
On the shoulders of others by Theresa Breslin
When the tour buses halted at the cotton fields beyond Samarkand it was Ramil who was always first to break off working...
The things I brought with me when I knew we were leaving home forever by Jenny Valentine
My grandmother was the thinnest woman I ever knew. Her ankles stuck like reeds from the dark, weighted pools of her shoes...
South by Gillian Philip
Ice lies in a thin slick across the bay, but he’s in the water anyway. The boy always is. Just like his grandmother...
Kindred by Jackie Kay
Being dead is not at all like I imagined when I was a kid. I imagined the dead would be pale and quiet, and that if they walked at all, they’d walk like zombies...
Archipelago by Marcus Sedgwick
Becca shrieks. Just once, and then is still. Everyone looks at her to see what is wrong; her eyes are wide and she is pointing at Niall, or rather, just over his shoulder...
The Ballad of Jemmy Button by Julia Donaldson
Around Cape Horn the wind howls cold; the glaciers meet the sea. A captain came with button box to bid for natives three...
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