Wordplay 2018

W O R D P L A Y N O V E M B E R

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W W W . S H E T L A N D A R T S . O R G

T H U R S D A Y

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N O V E M B E R

A CELEBRATION OF SHETLAND WRITING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7.30pm - 9.30pm  Mareel Auditorium

F R I D A Y

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N O V E M B E R

BIG BOOKBUG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p6  10.30am - 11.15am  Mareel Auditorium JO SWINSON MP - EQUAL POWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p7  7pm - 8pm  Mareel Auditorium CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP WITH ROBERT ALAN JAMIESON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p8  7.30pm - 9pm  Bonhoga Gallery PROFESSOR A. C. GRAYLING - DEMOCRACY AND ITS CRISIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p9  8.30pm - 9.30pm  Mareel Auditorium

S A T U R D A Y

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N O V E M B E R

ANN MARIE ANDERSON - DA FISHERMAN’S WIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p10  10am - 11am  Mareel Auditorium ANN MARIE ANDERSON - DA OORICKS & WRITING IN DIALECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p11  12pm - 1pm  Mareel Auditorium TRAVEL WRITING WORKSHOP WITH MALACHY TALLACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p12  11am - 12.30pm  Shetland Library WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p12  2pm - 4pm  Mareel, Screen 1 ROBERT ALAN JAMIESON - MACCLOUD FALLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p13  2pm - 3pm  Mareel Auditorium MALACHY TALLACK - THE VALLEY AT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p14  7pm - 8pm  Mareel Auditorium AMY LIPTROT - THE OUTRUN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p15  8.30pm - 9.30pm  Mareel Auditorium

S U N D A Y

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N O V E M B E R

NATURE WRITING WORKSHOP WITH PATRICK BARKHAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p16  10am - 11.30am  Mareel Foyer WRITING THE ARCHIVE WORKSHOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p16  12pm - 5pm  Shetland Museum & Archives JAMES & TOM MORTON - SHETLAND: COOKING ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD . . . . . . p17  1.30pm - 3pm  Mareel Auditorium THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p18  1.30pm - 3.45pm  Mareel, Screen 1 CHANGING NATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p18  4pm - 5.15pm  Mareel Auditorium JOHN GOODLAD - THE COD HUNTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p19  7pm - 8pm  Mareel Auditorium PATRICK BARKHAM - ISLANDER: A JOURNEY AROUND OUR ARCHIPELAGO . . . . . . . . . p20  8.30pm - 9.30pm  Mareel Auditorium LATE NIGHT OPEN MIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p21  9.30pm - 11pm  Mareel Café Bar

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The festival is about bringing the best local, national and international writing to you and while the world we live in seems increasingly uncertain, we hope to cover some of these challenging issues through our debates and events.

Wordplay 2018 On behalf of Shetland Arts, welcome to Wordplay 2018. This year promises an exciting programme, curated for the second year by me, Karen Cunningham, former director of Glasgow’s Aye Write! Festival, and featuring a great line up of authors and events.

Scotland has a host of book festivals, but the best stand out because they have an enticing flavour that’s all their own. That’s what I hope my second Wordplay will be – a real taste of Shetland. And taking this literally, we feature Shetland: Cooking on the Edge of the World by James and Tom Morton which explores life on the islands with food, drink and community at its heart and celebrates a very different kind of island paradise.

We are delighted to welcome local writers Malachy Tallack, one of Shetland and Scotland’s most exciting new writers and his exquisite debut novel, Valley at the Centre of the World; poet and novelist Robert Alan Jamieson; Bairn’s Author Ann Marie Anderson and John Goodlad, for many years the voice of the Shetland fishing industry, bringing us the incredible stories of Shetland fishing and people in The Cod Hunters.

The EU referendum in the UK and Trump’s victory in the USA sent shockwaves through our democratic systems. In Democracy and its Crisis A. C. Grayling investigates why the institutions of representative democracy seem unable to hold up against forces they were designed to manage, and why it matters.

In the year we celebrate the centenary of womens’ suffrage, we’re pleased to welcome to Shetland Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, who in her book Equal Power, outlines the steps we can take, small and large, to make our society truly equal.

Prizewinning natural history writer, Patrick Barkham with Islander: A Journey Around Our Archipelago, seeks to discover what it is like to live on a small island, and what it means to be an islander, a theme developed by journalist and novelist Amy Liptrot in The Outrun.

To ensure that you can attend as many events as you want this year’s festival sees the return of the Wordcard, an easy way to get access to everything!

Our thanks go to all our partners and supporters for making this festival possible, particularly those guests who have decided to travel north and visit us.

Come along and experience it for yourselves, ask awkward questions, take part in a workshop, join in the party, and give a great Shetland welcome to our guests!

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W O R D C A R D

 £45 / £30

Venues  Mareel

Get unlimited access to all festival events with a Wordcard! Members will benefit from priority booking, as well as exclusive offers and the chance to meet Wordplay guests at our special reception event.

Shetland Arts Development Agency Mareel, Lerwick, Shetland, ZE1 0WQ  01595 745500

Booking

Weisdale Mill, Weisdale, Shetland ZE2 9LW  01595 743843

 Mareel, Lerwick, Shetland ZE1 0WQ  01595 745500  shetlandarts.org

 Shetland Library

Concessions Concessions for all events apply to students and under 16s.

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 Bonhoga Gallery

Lower Hillhead, Lerwick, Shetland ZE1 0EL  01595 743868

 Shetland Museum & Archives Lerwick, Shetland ZE1 0WP  01595 695057

T H U R S D A Y

A Celebration of Shetland Writing  Thursday 8 November  Mareel Auditorium

 7.30pm - 9.30pm  £5

We are thrilled that the opening event of this year’s festival is A Celebration of Shetland Writing. Hear from a variety of Shetland writers in an evening featuring poetry and prose from across the isles.

This event also celebrates our local writers’ groups, who meet regularly to work on their pieces together. They share ideas, encourage and give critiques, and develop their skills and techniques. Many of these writers have published works in anthologies, or their own collections and novels. Some of the groups have even published Writers’ Group collections. This event gives us the chance to hear new work from these talented local writers.

This event is dedicated to the memory of Alex Cluness, former Literature Development Officer at Shetland Arts and creator of Wordplay.

The writers featured this evening have been aided, influenced and inspired by Alex’s talent and his tireless support of Shetland writing.

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F R I D A Y

Big Bookbug  Friday 9 November  Mareel Auditorium

 10.30am - 11.15am  Free

No booking required!

Bookbug gifts book bags to every child in Scotland and runs free song and rhyme sessions across the country, and to celebrate Wordplay, this year we are joined by fantastic author Lynne Rickards. She will read from some of her lovely rhyming books, including Bookbug favourite Never Bite a Tiger on the Nose, and I Do Not Eat the Colour Green.

Children’s author Lynne Rickards was born in Canada but has been happily settled in Scotland for many years. Her best-loved books are all about birds, from pink penguins and flamingos to comical puffins and handsome gannets. Most recently she has branched out to explore Scottish woodland animals with Rowan the Red Squirrel, which is written in her signature rhyme and features some scary encounters with an owl, a fox and a hedgehog.

This event is presented in partnership with Shetland Library.

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Shetland Library

Jo Swinson MP - Equal Power  Friday 9 November  Mareel Auditorium

 7pm - 8pm  £9 / £7

Why is gender inequality so stubbornly persistent?

Power remains concentrated in the hands of men right across the worlds of business, politics and culture. Equal Power holds a mirror up to society, showing the extent of gender inequality while making the case that everyone has the power to create change. In this inspiring and essential book, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson outlines the steps we can take, small and large, to make our society truly equal.

Jo Swinson was Minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), and Minister for Women, from 2012 to 2015, where her responsibilities included labour market policy, women on boards and corporate governance. Elected at the age of 25, Jo was the youngest MP in Parliament, and currently serves her home area of East Dunbartonshire as MP. She founded Equal Power Consulting, which worked to change organisations so that both women and men can thrive.

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F R I D A Y

Creative Writing Workshop with Robert Alan Jamieson  Friday 9 November  Bonhoga Gallery Recommended age: 14+

 7.30pm - 9pm  £7

Join Robert Alan Jamieson, Shetland-born writer and poet, for a very special masterclass in creative writing. Bonhoga Gallery will be open in the evening for this session, with tea, coffee and biscuits provided!

Robert Alan Jamieson was born in Sandness, Shetland. After publishing two novels and a collection of poetry, Shoormal, during the 1980s, he studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh as a mature student, before taking up the William Soutar Fellowship in Perth (1993-96).

He was Creative Writing Fellow at the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde between 1998 and 2001. Since the 1990s Jamieson has been active in teaching creative writing at Edinburgh University, where he is now a Senior Lecturer.

He co-edited Edinburgh Review from 1993 until 1998, and has published five novels.

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Professor A. C. Grayling Democracy and its Crisis  Friday 9 November  Mareel Auditorium

 8.30pm - 9.30pm  £9 / £7

The EU referendum in the UK and Trump’s victory in the USA sent shockwaves through our democratic systems. In Democracy and its Crisis A. C. Grayling investigates why the institutions of representative democracy seem unable to hold up against forces they were designed to manage, and why it matters.

First he considers those moments in history when the challenges we face today were first encountered and what solutions were found. Then he lays bare the specific threats facing democracy today.

“A. C. Grayling applies his great intellectual prowess to the most pressing issue of our times - the subversion of modern democracies by dark money, corporate power, Big Data, social media and fractured political party systems. Utterly brilliant.

Urgently needed. A book for NOW.” - Helena Kennedy, QC A. C. Grayling is Professor of Philosophy and Master of the New College of the Humanities, London. Among his many books are Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggle for Liberty and Rights that Made the

Modern West, Liberty in the Age of Terror, The God Argument and The Age of Genius. He has been a regular contributor to The Times, Financial Times, Independent on Sunday, Guardian, Economist, New Statesman, Prospect and New European. He appears frequently on radio and TV, including Newsnight and CNN News, and is a popular speaker at festivals and debates. He lives in London.

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S A T U R D A Y

Ann Marie Anderson Da Fisherman’s Wife  Saturday 10 November  10am - 11am  Mareel Auditorium  £5 Family event. Recommended age: 3 - 7 years, accompanying adult required.

Da Fisherman’s Wife is delightful picture storybook in Shetland dialect for young bairns.

The rhyming text follows the hardworking fisherman’s wife through her daily life on the croft while her husband is fishing at sea, while details of a crofting lifestyle are captured by the charming illustrations. Come along and read the story with Ann Marie, then have a go at creating your very own ram and peerie wife.

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Ann Marie Anderson Da Ooricks & Writing in Dialect  Saturday 10 November  12pm - 1pm  Mareel Auditorium  £5 Family event. Recommended age: 8 - 12 years, accompanying adult required.

Da Ooricks have captured the imagination of people of all ages, across Shetland and further afield. Join Ann Marie as she talks about how she came up with the story, learn about Shetland dialect and traditions, and then get your creative thinking hat on and play around with Shetland words to create your very own dialect story.

Ann Marie Anderson is a bairn’s author, needle felter and self publisher based in Whalsay, where she lives with her husband Michael and their two lasses, Faye & Mollie. She takes inspiration from her needle felted creations to write peerie Shetland dialect books for children. Her first title, Da Ooricks, and its follow up Ooricks in da Paet Hill are incredibly popular with young and old alike, and she even crafts Ooricks out of felt, so you can have one of your own! Ann Marie is a champion for the Shetland dialect, and when she is not writing or felting, she tours schools to discuss Shetland traditions and dialect with bairns.

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S A T U R D A Y

Travel Writing Workshop with Malachy Tallack  Saturday 10 November  11am - 12.30pm  Shetland Library  £7 Recommended age: 14+ Join award-winning author Malachy Tallack for a workshop session exploring travel, memoir and nature writing. Malachy will talk through ways to observe the world around you, and work with you to put those observations into words.

Malachy Tallack is the author of three books.

His most recent, The Valley at the Centre of the World, is a novel set in Shetland. It was a BBC Book at Bedtime, and was described by The Guardian as “a vivid closeup of island life”. His previous books were Sixty Degrees North and The Un-Discovered Islands.

Thanks to Shetland Library for hosting this session!

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Where the Wild Things Are (2009)  Saturday 10 November  2pm - 4pm  Mareel, Screen 1  £9 / £7.50 Spike Jonze’s delightful adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s story, told using a combination of real actors, computer animation and live puppeteering.

Max, a disobedient little boy sent to bed without his supper, enters a strange and exciting world – a forest inhabited by ferocious wild creatures, who crown Max as their ruler.

Running time: 2 hours (includes adverts and trailers)

Robert Alan Jamieson macCloud Falls  Saturday 10 November  2pm - 3pm  Mareel Auditorium  £9 / £7 In the summer of 2011, Gilbert Johnson, an Edinburgh antiquarian bookseller suffering from cancer who has only ever travelled via books before, decides to make one big journey while he is still fit enough – to British Columbia on the trail of an early settler he believes may have been his runaway grandfather, a man who went on to become important in the embryonic ‘Indian Rights’ movement of the 20 th century.

Flying over the Rocky Mountains he meets a fellow passenger, a Canadian woman, so beginning a relationship that ultimately carries the two of them deep into the interior of the province. macCloud Falls is both an exploration of the Scottish colonisation of B.C., and a roadtrip romance full of humour, rich characters and incident in the shadow of impending death.

Robert Alan Jamieson was born in 1958 into the crofting community of Sandness in Shetland.

Since graduating from the University of Edinburgh he has held the William Soutar Fellowship, coedited the Edinburgh Review and tutored creative writing at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities.

His work appears in many anthologies, and he has published both poetry collections and novels, including Shoormal, Soor Hearts, A Day at the Office and Da Happie Laand. In 2005 A Day at the Office was featured in The List’s ‘100 Best Scottish Books of All Time’. He is currently teaching Creative Writing at Edinburgh University.

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S A T U R D A Y

Malachy Tallack The Valley at the Centre of the World  Saturday 10 November  7pm - 8pm  Mareel Auditorium  £9 / £7 Set against the rugged west coast of Shetland, in a community faced with extinction, The Valley at the Centre of the World is a novel about love and grief, family and inheritance, rapid change and an age-old way of life. This is an exquisite debut novel from one of Scotland’s most exciting new writers.

“In this intense debut novel Malachy Tallack takes us to an isolated world inhabited by a community of utterly believable folk. He is great on the nature of work, how it is done, how it exhausts, how it shows our humanity. And when he gets this right other things naturally follow – like love and empathy and understanding. This book leaves us wanting his next” - Bernard MacLaverty, author of Grace Notes and Midwinter Break.

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Malachy will be interviewed by Susan Wyndham, the literary editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.

In her career as a journalist she has been editor of Good Weekend magazine, New York correspondent for The Australian and a deputy editor of the Herald.

She is the author of Life In His Hands: The True Story of a Neurosurgeon and a Pianist, and has edited and contributed to several other books. Susan, who has Shetland roots, has an artist’s residency at the Weaving Shed in Hillswick.

Amy Liptrot - The Outrun  Saturday 10 November  8.30pm - 9.30pm  Mareel Auditorium  £10 / £8 At the age of thirty, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, her days tracking Orkney’s wildlife, and her nights searching the sky for the Mirrie Dancers, Amy discovers how the wild can restore life and renew hope.

“A lyrical, brave memoir. It’s Liptrot’s aptitude for marrying her inner-space with wild outer-spaces that makes her such a compelling writer ... I enjoyed this book enormously” - Will Self, The Guardian Amy Liptrot has published her work with various magazines, journals and blogs and she has written a regular column for Caught by the River out of which The Outrun has emerged. As well as writing for major newspapers including the Guardian and the Observer, Amy has worked as an artist’s model, a trampolinist and in a shellfish factory. The Outrun was awarded the 2016 Wainwright Prize and was shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Prize.

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S U N D A Y

Nature Writing Workshop with Patrick Barkham

Writing the Archive Workshop

 Sunday 11 November  begins in Mareel foyer Recommended age: 14+

 Sunday 11 November  12pm - 5pm  Shetland Museum & Archives  Free limited capacity - booking recommended!

Recommended age: 14+

 10am - 11.30am  £7

Join Guardian writer Patrick Barkham for a Sunday morning stroll around Lerwick. Travelling up and down lanes, through parks and along the shore, Patrick will talk you through the varied aspects of nature writing and there will be opportunities to work on your own writing.

Please bring weather appropriate footwear and clothing. This session will begin and end in the Mareel foyer.

Patrick Barkham is Natural History Writer for the Guardian. He is the author of The Butterfly Isles, which was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize; Badgerlands, which was also shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Wainwright Prize; and Coastlines. He lives in Norfolk.

An afternoon workshop at the Shetland Museum and Archives, with members of Edinburgh University’s Writing the North Project.

How were women’s lives reflected in their literature in the nineteenth century? And how can we be inspired by them today? In this workshop we will first study manuscripts and objects from the archive to find out what Shetland women were writing about. Then in the second part, poets Pamela Beasant and Jim Mainland will guide participants through a writing workshop to produce poems about the items in the collection.

Participants will be able to publish their work in an e-book on the Writing the North website. www.writingthenorth.com Sponsored by the University of Edinburgh

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James & Tom Morton Shetland: Cooking on the Edge of the World  Sunday 11 November  Mareel Auditorium

 1.30pm - 3pm  £9 / £7

Co-written with his father, broadcaster and journalist Tom Morton, James Morton’s latest offering, Shetland: Cooking on the Edge of the World explores life on an island with food, drink and community at its heart.

The recipes take in the very best that the isles have to offer, from celebratory feasts through the food of the sea and treasures from the land and earth. There’s cooking borne from necessity and thrift such as smoking and preserving, and it simply wouldn’t be Scottish without baking and, of course, a peerie dram.

Join James and Tom Morton for an afternoon exploring Shetland’s food and drink, including a live cooking demonstration!

James Morton, Great British Bake Off 2012 finalist grew up in Shetland and now works as a doctor in Glasgow and owns a brewery. His writing has won several awards including the Guild of Food Writers Cookbook of the Year for Brilliant Bread. Shetland: Cooking on the Edge of the World is his fourth book.

Tom Morton’s broadcasting career on both radio and TV spans 30 years. He is also a critically acclaimed novelist, non-fiction writer and awardwinning journalist. He has written several books, including a best-selling biography of the Gaelic rock band Runrig, the whisky travelogue Spirit of Adventure, and several other publications, all critically acclaimed.

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S U N D A Y

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)  Sunday 11 November  Mareel, Screen 1

 1.30pm - 3.45pm  £9 / £7.50

Marking a century since the birth of Muriel Spark, a screening of the award-winning 1969 adaptation of her most famous novel.

A headstrong young teacher in a private school in 1930s Edinburgh ignores the curriculum and influences her impressionable 12-year-old charges with her over-romanticised world view.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes (includes adverts and trailers)

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Changing Nature  Sunday 11 November  Mareel Auditorium

 4pm - 5.15pm  £7

We have been writing for hundreds of years about nature and the world around us. Nature writing has been used to keep records, to understand the world and to appreciate it. But has nature writing changed with the growing threat of global warming, advances in technology and the impact these have on Planet Earth?

Join Shetland-born writer Malachy Tallack, Guardian Natural History Writer Patrick Barkham, Orcadian writer Amy Liptrot and local writer Sally Huband for a discussion around the changing nature of nature writing.

Sally Huband lives in the west of Shetland’s Mainland with her husband, son and daughter. She received a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for Narrative Non-fiction in 2017 and is working on her first book.

John Goodlad The Cod Hunters  Sunday 11 November  Mareel Auditorium

 7pm - 8pm  £9 / £7

The incredible story of the Shetlanders who fished for cod around Faroe, Rockall, Iceland and Greenland.

Much more than the history of boats and fish, or Shetland and Shetlanders, this is a story of ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

The geographical scope is extensive; from the remote fjords of western Greenland to the elegant dining tables of nineteenth century London, from the fishing banks off Faroe to the the best restaurants in the Basque country, and from the taverns of Torshavn to the prison cells of Lerwick.

Author John Goodlad was the voice of the Shetland fishing industry as CEO of the Shetland Fishermen’s Association, a former fish farmer, and currently an adviser to a number of national and international fisheries organisations.

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S U N D A Y

Patrick Barkham - Islander: A Journey Around Our Archipelago  Sunday 11 November  Mareel Auditorium

 8.30pm - 9.30pm  £9 / £7

The British Isles are an archipelago made up of two large islands and 6,289 smaller ones. Some, like the Isle of Man, resemble miniature nations, with their own language and tax laws; others, like Ray Island in Essex, are abandoned and mysterious places haunted by myths, ghosts and foxes. There are resurgent islands such as Eigg, which have been liberated from capricious owners to be run by their residents; holy islands like Bardsey, the resting place of 20,000 saints, and still a site of spiritual questing; and deserted islands such as St Kilda, famed for the evacuation of its human population, and now dominated by wild sheep and seabirds.

In this evocative and vividly observed book, Patrick Barkham explores some of the most beautiful landscapes in the British Isles as he travels to ever-smaller islands in search of their special magic. Our small islands are both places of freedom and imprisonment, party destinations and oases of peace, strangely suburban and deeply wild. They are places where the past is unusually present, but they can also offer a

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vision of an alternative future. Meeting all kinds of islanders, from nuns to puffins, from local legends to rare subspecies of vole, he seeks to discover what it is like to live on a small island, and what it means to be an islander.

Patrick Barkham is Natural History Writer for the Guardian. He is the author of The Butterfly Isles, which was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize; Badgerlands, which was also shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Wainwright Prize; and Coastlines. He lives in Norfolk.

Late Night Open Mic  Sunday 11 November  Mareel Café Bar

 9.30pm - 11pm  Free

Wordplay takes over our popular Open Mic event for a special late night edition. Anyone and everyone is invited to share a song or a tune, a new piece of prose, poetry or stand up, or anything you want - the stage is yours! Join us for a relaxed vibe and a chance to enjoy emerging talent and established performers alike share a stage.

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Education Programme We are delighted to have two fantastic authors visiting us for the Wordplay Education Programme. This programme was made possible by the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Fund.

Children’s author Lynne Rickards was born in Canada but has been happily settled in Scotland for many years. Her best-loved books are all about birds, from pink penguins and flamingos to comical puffins and handsome gannets.

Most recently she has branched out to explore Scottish woodland animals. Rowan the Red Squirrel is written in her signature rhyme and features some scary encounters with an owl, a fox and a hedgehog. Lynne will be visiting primary age classes during Wordplay, as well as reading us her stories at Big Bookbug (see page 6).

Claire McFall is a writer and English teacher who lives and works in the Scottish Borders.

Her first book, Ferryman, is a love story which retells the ancient Greek myth of Charon, the ferryman of Hades who transported souls to the Underworld. The novel has been Shortlisted for the Scottish Children’s Book Awards and the Grampian Children’s Book Awards. Her second novel, Bombmaker, is a YA dystopian thriller in which the main character Lizzie struggles to survive in a London dominated by gangs and plagued by terrorism. Black Cairn Point, Claire’s third novel, is a paranormal thriller about a camping trip gone wrong. When all of her friends suffer the wrath of a mysterious entity, only Heather is left to take the blame! Black Cairn Point won the first Scottish Teenage Book Prize. Claire’s latest novel, Trespassers, a sequel to Ferryman, was released by Floris in September 2017. Claire will be visiting secondary age classes during Wordplay to discuss her writing inspiration and what it’s like to be a published author.

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Bringing books to Shetland since 1949 Now “on tour” at WORDPLAY 2018 Visit us at Mareel!

Funders

Partners

Shetland Islands Council

Shetland Library

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W W W . S H E T L A N D A R T S . O R G