The first #NorthSeaPoets live event is coming up this Friday! 🌊 The Kirk Sessions: an evening of poetry and music 🗓️ 3rd April ⏰ 7pm BST 📍 Cortachy Kirk, Kirriemuir, Angus, DD8 4LX 🎟️ £12/£10 Book your spot: buff.ly/yaZMMix #PoetrySky #LiveEvents

Our Ewan Downie's on a roll! Check out 'Semele', the latest story in his ongoing exploration of the Dionysus myth, in the new issue of Carmina Magazine. @ewandownie.com carminamagazine.com/issues-main/...

Register here: uark.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

ach well all livin language is sacred… —Tom Leonard Published in GHOSTIE MEN (1980) #poem #poetry

A feel fur thon wee Lewis keelies stuck in Lunnon Goggle-e’ed wi chowin the taps aff their shields, Haimseek fur Norroway ower the faem. —Jim Alison, “Ingaunees” originally published as a poster for @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social #poem #poetry #chess #Vikings #medievalsky

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was born #OTD, 31 March. An extraordinarily prolific anthropologist, writer & literary critic, he is best remembered today for collecting & editing fairy stories from around the world 🎂🧵 💙📚 #kidlit #fairytales #C19 1/6 universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/t...

Hugely excited and proud to say the Rhynie monograph is now published! This is one of the most important sites and landscapes ever discovered for understanding the Picts and the development of the early Pictish kingdoms #careergoalunlocked! #Pictsarethebest! books.socantscot.org/digital-book...

Beinn Eighe, ya beaut! ✨✍️ If you missed it in print on Saturday, my piece from Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve - which became Britain's first NNR when it was created 75 years ago - is on @theguardian.com today. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/...

We’re funding research into #palaeography teaching in Scotland! See the job spec here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRA145/s...

So excited to reveal to everyone the absolutely incredible 2026 poster created by @mortiscausa.bsky.social 😍 We can't wait to welcome you all back to the DoubleTree this August to celebrate everything sequential and small press!

Call for Papers: Politics, Place and Print Culture: The 14th International Walter Scott Conference The University of Edinburgh, Scotland 28 to 30 June 2027, with an optional trip to Scott’s home, Abbotsford House, on 1 July More information: www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6395

George Buchanan’s Afterlives: Borrowings of Buchanan’s Works in Scottish Libraries, c.1750–1840 14 May, Stirling – free (suggested donation £5) Prof Katie Halsey traces how George Buchanan’s works were borrowed & read in Scotland across the #C18th & early #C19th www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/evening-ta...

Grab your early bird weekend pass for this year's @cymerafestival.co.uk before time runs out. One of my favourite genre literary events in the writing year, and all the better for being nearly on my doorstep www.cymerafestival.co.uk

Fully-funded three-year PhD Scholarship: Living with Print in the Eighteenth Century Based at @sydney.edu.au (with Nicola Parsons) and @glasgow.ac.uk (with me), working with collections in Australia and Scotland. Deadline April 21st - please circulate! www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...

Black Doe is now live for ARC downloads on Booksirens. If you love #historicalfantasy featuring female assassins, fierce mothers, warlords, clan politics, kelpies, and bloodythirsty faerie pine martens, go have a look and read a sample now! 📚 🖤 booksirens.com/book/I033FFT....

The Loud Poets Open Mic is tonight! We'll be at the Scottish Storytelling Centre for our second March Open Mic from 7 pm and we're welcoming Dev McMath as our featured poet. We have limited open mic slots available on the door, so get down early to put your name in the draw!

A Kingdom in Perplexity: Voices of 17th-Century Scotland Symposium 11 June @glasgow.ac.uk PGRs & ECRs specialising in any aspect of #earlymodern Scottish history & culture are invited to participate in a new interdisciplinary research symposium – email [email protected] for details

Fame! Next...fortune?

Boyhood is Novel of the Month in The Independent! “A challenging, unconventional and daring piece of fiction.” @whiterabbitbks.bsky.social

My book 'Drystone - A Life Rebuilt' will be out in the US and Canada now. If you've been waiting to buy it, you can. If you've been waiting to order it into your library, you can. If you've been waiting to tell your friends who are reviewers at the NYT, you can ;) #Books #Reading #US #Canada

It is big sky and its changes, the sea all round and the waters within. It is the way sea and sky work off each other constantly… —Andrew Greig, “Orkney/This Life” from INTO YOU, @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social 2001 #poem #poetry #Orkney www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/orkney-...

Leabhar na Seachdaine (18): William Gillies & Donald E. Meek (Edd.), 'Iasad Rann / A Borrowing of Verses: Original Gaelic poems and translations by John Maclean' (Scottish Gaelic Texts Society; 2018). www.gaelicbooks.org/rannsaich-an...

Calling Glasgow horror fans 🪓 @neilwilliamson.bsky.social and I will be at @waterstonesargyle.bsky.social on July 14th to chat about HOME SICK and THE PACKET. It's still a way off, but tickets are available now for all you early birds -> www.waterstones.com/events/chill...

Frae fields whare Spring her sweets has blawn Wi’ caller verdure our the lawn, The Gowdspink comes in new attire, The brawest ’mang the whistling choir… —Robert Fergusson (1750–1774), “Ode to the Gowdspink” from The Poetical Works of Robert Fergusson (Glasgow, 1800) #poem #poetry #C18th

On the day we leap into the future, it feels like the right time to invite you to an evening with Ken MacLeod @amendlocke.bsky.social, an author who has spent the last 30 years sharing is visions of the future. #writingcommunity #author Free online this Wed: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1984677623...

Life, letters & low tide in Shetland “Valda is clearly the more practical of the two. It would become apparent that without her at the helm, they were doomed.” Dr Colin McIlroy @natlibscot.bsky.social examines the letters of Hugh MacDiarmid & Valda Trevlyn Grieve www.nls.uk/collections/...

NEW EPISODE: 'A Regimental Scandal' (1892) - A respected major is suspected of cheating at cards... Chat about: regimental honour, the Tranby Croft/Royal Baccarat Scandal, celebrated trials, and ferrets. bit.ly/DODoyle; bit.ly/DOD73sn. #arthurconandoyle

I hear your 𝘣𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘥, that slow singer, alone at my desk yet walking with you through your valleys and hills, that shining stream bubbling notes of your music your pure Welsh music… —Sheila Templeton, “For R.S. Thomas” The Welsh poet R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) was born #OTD, 29 March #poetry

This is nice - LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK is the Independent’s Biography of the Month 🐈‍⬛

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland. And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

So I discovered that the bagpipe song I really like times perfectly with the Napoleon Dynamite dance. Then a bunch of other stuff happened and I am so sorry but this exists now and I'm far less sorry than previously implied.

Smoky sky. In autumn wind I stroll by the quays in the last light… —Edwin Morgan, “Je ne regrette rien: in memory of Edith Piaf” published in COLLECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2012 #InternationalWomenInMusicDay #poem #poetry www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/inde...

I enjoyed this unusually literary bit of marketing from my university with @mckeever.bsky.social

“The Delusions was me asking, ‘What if everyone had to face who they really are?’, even if it doesn’t happen in this life but in the next. The only real value you have is your soul.” @snackmag.bsky.social interviews Jenni Fagan about her new novel THE DELUSIONS 💙📚 snackmag.co.uk/jenni-fagan-...

When the sun was white and wintry and drained of energy Macbeth met the witches under the rim of the sky… —Iain Crichton Smith, “Macbeth and the Witches” in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2021 #BookWormSat #poem #poetry #Shakespeare www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017094...

There are some stones that open in the night like flowers Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers… —Jackie Kay, “The Red Graveyard” from OTHER LOVERS, @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social 1993 Today, 28 March, is #InternationalWomenInMusicDay #poem 1/3 www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category...

There was this king sitted in his garden all alane When his brother in his ear poured a little bit o’ henbane, Stole his brother’s crown & his money & his widow; But the dead king walked & got his son and said, “Hey listen, kiddo…” —Adam McNaughtan, “Oor Hamlet”: a tragedy in 3 minutes #BookWormSat

Really big news! Author copies of my book are here, and they're gorgeous. The colours! The chunkiness! The big glossy cat on the front! LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK is out in 2 weeks. Go pre-order it; it'll make a beautiful addition to your living space. I’m just saying…

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 “Bad Attitudes by Agnes Owens. I’d never heard of this author before (my fault), but she has an extensive backlist to explore. This is the point from which I like to begin a novel these days.” @aowensarchive.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

I wad ha’e gi’en him my lips tae kiss, Had I been his, had I been his… —“Mary’s Song”, by Marion Angus (1865–1946) – born #OTD, 27 March from THE TINKER’S ROAD (1924) “She has an authentic voice straight out of the ballad tradition, an eerie shimmer to her best poems” —Kathleen Jamie #poem #poetry

And we are LIVE! The funding campaign for ALEX AUTOMATIC #7 is now LIVE on Kickstarter. Check out the page! BTW, please repost if you can, we're basically running promo only from Bluesky for the first time, so any help is appreciated! www.kickstarter.com/projects/fra...

early attempts to feminize the Scottish canon foundered on arguments over terminology en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mons_Meg

“The life & career of the gifted Glaswegian writer Catherine Carswell was marked by such alarming & recurrent notoriety that her present obscurity is baffling” @emmagarman.bsky.social on the life & work of Catherine Carswell (1879–1946)—b. #OTD 27 March 💙📚 1/4 www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06...

“The general assumption in the past has tended to be that an overview of Scottish drama would not take very long. Between Sir David Lyndsay & James Bridie, what was there of any lasting importance?” Edwin Morgan, “Scottish #Drama: an overview” (1999) #WorldTheatreDay 1/7 asls.org.uk/scottish-dra...

…There I’ll come when I’m a man With a camel caravan; Light a fire in the gloom Of some dusty dining-room; See the pictures on the walls, Heroes, fights and festivals; And in a corner find the toys Of the old Egyptian boys. —Robert Louis Stevenson, “Travel” #poem #poetry #kidlit #archaeology

❓What's better than one beautiful Nutmeg World Cup edition cover? 📖 Two beautiful Nutmeg World Cup edition covers! ⬇️ Here's our retail version - same pages inside, but a different cover to grab perusers' eyes. It's in Waterstones across the UK now, and soon to be elsewhere.

“On a wet and wintry afternoon in January, with the Braan in spate, licking the edges of the lower walkways, the work brings a kind of mammalian warmth to the dark and damp” @gregchthomas.bsky.social on walking Scotland’s Corbenic Poetry Path #poetry artuk.org/discover/sto...

A Kick Up the Arts podcast @nicolameighan.bsky.social visits the @agrayarchive.bsky.social & talks to Scottish writers Rory Watson & Alan Bissett about the wonder of words, the magic of old photographs, & the power of listening to women’s voices 💙📚 www.akickupthearts.org/blog-3-1/ror...

As a former Fife child I can tell you that’s an entirely normal facial expression to make when swimming in the North Sea