Advent Quiz - Day 18

Question 18

Who was the last writer in residence for George Mackay Brown Fellowship, who was based at Stromness Library?


Post your answer in the comments below.
Closing date for entries is 31st December. 
Answers will be posted and the winner announced on 5th January 2015.

Answer: Nalini Paul (2009-10)

Cold

After a spell of unseasonably mild weather there is a definite chill in the air to accompany the rapidly shortening days. But today dear readers we offer you not one, but two remedies for beating the cold this weekend.

First an event in Stromness this evening when West Side Cinema, supported by Orkney Library and Archive and The George Mackay Brown Fellowship, presents a screening of the film 'Lore' followed by a question and answer session with  Rachel Seiffert,  author of the novel The Dark Room on which the film is based. The screening is in the Stromness Town Hall at 7.30pm and entry is £5 (£3 for under 16s - 'Lore' has a 15 certificate rating). 

We've heard from the organisers that the boiler in the Town Hall is playing up, so if you want to be sure of escaping the cold please wrap up warm. West Side Cinema invites its audiences to bring their own refreshments to screenings and so tonight something warming might be appropriate.

Our second offering is for those who have already succumbed to the various seasonal ailments which are doing the rounds and may be looking for alternative remedies with which to tackle their ills.

Whatever your symptoms we recommend a visit to the Orkney Archive Blog where our lovely colleagues have been researching some traditional Orkney remedies. If you don't fancy giving the limpet juice or roasted mice a try then we can at least guarantee that the description of the wart cure will provide you with the therapeutic effects of a good laugh! 

A Week of Words

We hope you had a restful weekend because this week is full of exciting literary events for your enjoyment.

On Wednesday 10th April, Reader in Residence Alison Miller will lead The Poem's the Thing - an informal poetry reading group open to all who want to discover new poems and share old favourites - there will be a session in Kirkwall Library between 1pm-2pm and here in Stromness Library from 6pm- 7pm.

Then on Thursday 11th April the Orkney Book Festival 2013 begins with a Film night hosted by West Side Cinema at 7.30pm when they will be showing That Now by Sarah Forrest, who was the first Margaret Tait resident in 2012. This will be followed by a showing of Blue Black Permanent by Margaret Tait.

A full list of events during the four day festival can be found on the George Mackay Brown Fellowship website , or pick up a programme from the library, but we would like to draw your attention to the events being held in Stromness on Sunday 14th April.

At 11am here at Stromness Library, Bryce Wilson will give a talk on 'Stromness and John Rae'; then in the afternoon from 2-4pm Ian Macpherson will be running a Workshop on comedy writing - if you would like to sign up for this workshop please email pamela.beasant@virgin.net

Still in Stromness on Sunday evening starting at 7.30pm in the Stromness Hotel Ian Macpherson and Magi Gibson will host an evening of entertainment entitled 'Bemused'.

Entry to all events costs £5 (£4 concessions) at the door, with a Whole Festival Pass costing £20  available in advance from Orkney Library in Kirkwall, or on the door at events.

After all that excitement you may need a peedie sit down with a good book, so don't forget there will be a book sale running in Orkney Library, Kirkwall on Friday and Saturday, while here in Stromness we have our own small selection of sale books at the bargain price of 5p per title,  with the offer that, should you buy 5 books we will give you a 6th for free.

It's going to be a busy week!

Orkney Book Festival 2013

We've just received copies of the programme for the Orkney Book Festival 2013 and what an exciting line-up of events and authors to look forward to!

Organised by The George Mackay Brown Fellowship, the four day festival runs from Thursday 11th to Sunday 14th April and includes a Book Fair in the Orkney Library and Archive; the GMB Memorial Lecture by Dr Sarah Neely on Margaret Tait; and a whole host of events featuring local and visiting writers including Bryce Wilson, Struan Sinclair, Brian Murray, John Flett Brown, Ian Macpherson, Magi Gibson, Alison Miller, and Gerda Stevenson.

Full details of events are listed in the Orkney Book Festival programme, copies of which are available in both Stromness and Kirkwall libraries, as well as on the George Mackay Brown Fellowship website.

The Poem's the Thing

Tonight sees the first meeting of our new poetry reading group - The Poem's the Thing -  led by Reader in Residence Alison Miller.

The group will meet on the second Wednesday of every month from 6pm - 7pm in the Stromness Library exhibition room - the Kirkwall group will meet on the same dates from 1pm-2pm in the Kirkwall Library. Come along to share your favourite poets and poems and discover new ones.

This week also sees the launch of  2013 Young Orkney Writers’ Prize for poetry run by Orkney Library and Archive and the George Mackay Brown Fellowship. 

The theme this year is Adventure and poems will be judged in two age groups, 8-11 years, and 12-15 years. Entry forms are available from both libraries or can be downloaded from the Orkney Library and Archive website. 

The closing date for entries is 16th March 2013 - so get writing!

Creative Vision

Tonight sees the launch of a new anthology of Orkney writing as part of Creative Vision - a series of events in Orkney celebrating mental wellbeing and challenging stigma, which are part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.

The new anthology To The World, edited by Rosie Alexander,  includes work by a wide range of local writers and artists, from the experienced to first-time writers and artists, and offers an honest exploration of the mind and self in all moods and states of health. The anthology has been funded by See Me and is published by The George Mackay Brown Fellowship and Orkney Minds. 

Tonight's launch event takes place in the Upper Library, Stromness Academy, at 7.30pm and will include readings from the anthology by some of the writers, along with music and refreshments. 

Orcrime 2012

Time to get out your magnifying glass, and put on your deerstalker hat, scruffy mac, woolly jumper, sensible shoes, handlebar moustache - or whatever fictional detectives might be wearing these days - and get along to the library for the start of Orkney's first crime writing festival which starts tomorrow. 

Orcrime 2012 will run from 11th to 13th October, and is organised by Orkney Library and Archive and sponsored by the Orcadian Bookshop, and will feature a range of events and promotions -  from appearances by leading crime novelists Lin Anderson, Ann Cleeves and Denise Mina, to free DVD and CD loans. 

A full programme of events can be found on the Orcrime 2012 page of the Orkney Library website, but we can tell you that tomorrows events start with Broth and Breid - a chance to have lunch at the Kirkwall library     between 12-2pm with a suitably themed menu including Lawless Lentil soup served with a selection of bread, oatcakes and cheese. 

Then at 2pm the winners of the Orkney Library and Archive and George Mackay Brown Fellowship crime short story competition will be announced and at 7pm there will be a talk from Ann Cleeves. 

While the majority of events will take place in Kirkwall, here in Stromness you can borrow from a selection of new crime titles, enjoy free CD loans and even take part in our name the crime show quiz. 

Keep an eye on the Orkney Library Facebook Page and Twitter account for all the latest news on the events. 

Bernard MacLaverty and Ron Pretty

Stromness is a hotbed of literary activity this week with two readings by visiting authors over the next two days!

Tonight (Wednesday 5th September) Bernard MacLaverty will give a reading in the Pier Arts Centre at 7.30pm - tickets at the door.

Author of  five collections of short stories and four novels, Bernard MacLaverty has also written versions of his fiction for other media - radio plays, television plays, screenplays. Recently he wrote and directed a short film 'Bye-Child'.

After living for a time in Edinburgh and the Isle of Islay he now lives in Glasgow where he is Visiting Writer/Professor at the University of Strathclyde. He is also employed as a teacher of creative writing on a postgraduate course in prose fiction run by the Research Institute of  Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

Then tomorrow evening (Thursday 6th September) acclaimed Australian poet Ron Pretty will give a reading here, in the exhibition room of the Stromness Library, at 7.30pm.

Ron Pretty has published seven books of poetry, the most recent being Postcards from the Centre(July 2010) . He won the NSW Premier’s Special Prize for services to literature in 2001 and received an AM for services to Australian literature in 2002.

This event is supported by the Orkney Library and Archive and The George Mackay Brown Fellowship, entry is free but donations are invited to cover costs.

Orcrime 2012 - Crime Fiction Competition

This year Orkney will add a new festival to its calendar when the first Orkney crime writing festival - Orcrime 2012 - will run from October 11-13. Organised by Orkney Library and Archive and sponsored by the Orcadian Bookshop the festival will feature appearances from renowned crime novelists Lin Anderson, Ann Cleeves and Denise Mina, as well as crime historian and true crime author Paul Harrison, and Orkney storyteller Tom Muir.

We will bring you more details of the events nearer to the time but something you need to know about now is the chance to enter the first Orkney Crime Fiction Short Story Competition!

The competition will form part of  Orcrime 2012 and is being run by Orkney Library and Archive and the George Mackay Brown Fellowship.

Library assistant Stewart Bain explains the motivation behind the new competition: “Crime fiction has always been popular with our readers, but other than Allan Guthrie and J Storer Clouston, there haven’t been many Orcadian authors known for writing crime fiction. We hope this competition might change that and that one day we might be lending books by the winning author.”

Lucy Gibbon, of the George Mackay Brown Fellowship, is also hoping the competition will tap into the rich vein of creative writing talent in the islands:  “We are very pleased to launch this competition in partnership with the Orkney Library and Archive. We hope that it will encourage people to put pen to paper and come up with fresh angles on the theme of crime.”

The competition is open to anyone over the age of 16 and the judges are looking for a fictional story of no more than 2000 words which has not been published before. There is an entry fee of £2 per story.

A shortlist of five entries will be decided by a panel of local judges, representing the George Mackay Brown Fellowship, the Orkney Library and Archive, and Living Orkney, from which the winners will be chosen by award winning crime writer Ann Cleeves, author of the popular Shetland Quartet. There are cash prizes of £100, £50 and £25 for the top three entries and the first prize winner will have their story published in a future edition of Living Orkney magazine.

The closing date for entries is 20th September  and the winner will be announced during the Orcrime Festival. For more information on how to enter you can download the entry guidelines as a pdf.

George Mackay Brown - Memorial Lecture

For those of you who would like to know more about George Mackay Brown and his work there is an opportunity to learn more from Dr Linden Bicket, who will give the GMB Memorial Lecture on Friday 13th April at 7.30pm in the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness.

Linden, a postgraduate research student from the University of Glasgow (who wrote her PhD on GMB) recently spent six weeks in Orkney catalogueing a collection of GMB's papers, which have been placed on permanent loan with the Orkney Library and Archive by Archie and Elizabeth Bevan. Funding for the ‘George Mackay Brown: A Literary Executor’s Archive’ project came from the award of a  British Academy Small Grant.

The GMB Memorial Lecture is organised by the GMB Fellowship, and admission is £5 (£3 concessions) at the door.

Orkney Book Festival 2011

Today Friday 15th April, sees the start of the first Orkney Book Festival. The weekend of events kicks off with a Book Fair at the Orkney Library in Kirkwall. Featuring books for sale by Scottish Island Writers from a range of island publishers and booksellers, the fair also includes a sale of withdrawn library books.

Also in the Orkney Library today at 3.45pm Ragnhild Ljosland will give a talk on Orkney writer Christina Costie.

Then this evening at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, at 7.30pm, Ron Ferguson will give the 2011 GMB Memorial lecture on George Mackay Brown's spiritual journey.

Saturday Events

The Book Fair continues in the Orkney Library tomorrow Saturday 16th April, from 9.30am-5pm. Also at Orkney Library at 2pm Alayne Barton from the Islands Book Trust will give a talk on the work of the trust, then at 4pm Simon Hall will give a talk entitled From fjord to island foreshore - three neglected treasures of the Orkney Room.

Saturday's events will round off with an evening of readings and music by Lise Sinclair, John Aberdein and Orkney writers and musicians, at the Cromarty Hall, St Margaret's Hope, South Ronaldsay starting at 7.30pm.

Sunday Events

Sunday sees the Orkney Book Festival head to Stromness Library for a day of writing workshops. In the morning Lise Sinclair will give a workshop on poetry and lyrics from 11am-1pm. Then in the afternoon Kevin MacNeil will lead a workshop on characterisation and dialogue in prose from 2-4pm. If you would like to sign up for either or both of these workshops please contact pamela.beasant@virgin.net

The Festival concludes on Sunday evening in the Lynnfield Hotel, Kirkwall when Kevin MacNeil and Nalini Paul (GMB Writing Fellow 2009-10) will join with local writers and musicians for an evening of readings and music.

Entry to Okney Book Festival events costs £5 (£3 concession) payable at the door, and a Whole Festival Pass is also available for £20  from any of the events or from the Orkney Library.

It's going to be a busy weekend!

Orkney Book Festival

We are very excited about next weekend's Orkney Book Festival, organised by the George Mackay Brown Fellowship and supported by Orkney Library, Scottish Island Writers' Network and Scotland's Islands.

See poster below for full programme of events: