“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

What secrets of the unseen are you trying to unravel pointing your wand, urging the dead to speak? —Janette Ayachi, “The Spell (After Sir William Fettes Douglas 1864)” #BookologyThursday #poem #poetry www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-spe...

There are 2 episodes of the Scottish Food History Podcast on the life & legacy of Florence Marian McNeill. Presented by @drlindsaymiddleton.bsky.social & @tenementkitchen.bsky.social with guests Jeremy Lee & Dr Gina Lyle. Part 1: #foodhistory rss.com/podcasts/the...

You love books. Your house is full of them and you would *never* shelve them in that back-to-front way that is periodically fashionable but never forgiveable. Allow me to direct you to the UK's *only* books TV show: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... #booksky

Florence Marian McNeill (1885–1973) was born #OTD, 26 March. A notable figure in Scotland’s #C20 literary renaissance, she wrote on politics, #food & #folklore – including THE SILVER BOUGH, a 4-volume study of Scottish festivals & folk-belief 1/4 www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to...

“Muriel Spark’s two archives, one in Tulsa, the other in Edinburgh...[are] ‘her master plot,’ the ultimate code, created with an ingenuity that only the most insightful of interpreters can crack.” —Miranda Seymour

THE SECRET I HAVE BEEN (BADLY) SITTING ON IS NO LONGER A SECRET Tor UK have bought the print rights for my Audible Originals The Shape of Monsters and A Million Points of Light! www.thebookseller.com/rights/tor-s...

I’m out here now on the roof. Look! I had to get nearer the sky, For the city was too full of rooms And I can’t be content with a window… —Margaret Tait, “A Poem for a Morning” from Margaret Tait: poems, stories & writings, @carcanet.bsky.social 2012 #poem #poetry www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017379...

Writers, I have a couple of places open for one-to-one mentoring due to illness in my current cohort. (How it works: you send 6 poems each month, I send back notes ahead of a meeting to discuss the work in detail. I ask for a 6 month commitment of working with me.) Get in touch if you’re interested!

Are you an intermediate/advanced writer looking to dig deep into your craft? If so, check out my forthcoming workshop 'Fiction as Archaeology', which takes place online on Wednesday 1st April; it's going to be a banger!

Medieval monks in Easter Ross – and not the Hebridean island of Iona – may have created the intricately decorated Book of Kells, according to researchers. A new project will explore the possibility it was created at a monastery in Portmahomack #medievalsky #bookhistory www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The IASSL PhD Award is aimed at outstanding PhD dissertations on Scottish literature submitted outside of the UK (written in English or other languages). The first round is open for submissions! 🏆🎓 scotlit-iassl.org/awards/iassl...

“Trefoil, vervain, John’s-wort, dill, Hinders witches of their will, Weel is them, that weel may Fast upon St Andrew’s day” —spoken by the (6-foot-tall) Meg Merrilies, in Walter Scott’s 1815 novel GUY MANNERING, or, THE ASTROLOGER #WyrdWednesday #romanticism www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

oh noes... But also: their new slop churner is called Spud?!

I have cited the slop that was in the snippet and which you were probably wanting to firebomb Forgive me it was delicious so averaged and so wrong

Psst, wanna see something weird?

What is... Traditional Storytelling? 7 May, @scotstorycentre.bsky.social & online. Free Storytelling comes in all shapes and sizes, but how do we know what makes it “traditional” or not? Orkney storyteller Tom Muir explores the question scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:64...

The Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow’s Ashton Lane has been granted listed building status thanks to its murals painted by the renowned Scottish artist & author Alasdair Gray, “one of Scotland’s most well-known cultural figures of the 20th & 21st centuries” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

They mentioned the documentary “What Do Artists Do All Day” in this episode. Here it is 👇🏻 youtu.be/Uy6lSE0bTeA?...

MAGES IN SPAAAAAACE! Want 25% off a tale of wizards building a magical rocket ship to go to their moon? First Mage On The Moon will be published on April 14th. www.barnesandnoble.com/w/first-mage... Use PREORDER25 to get 25% off the preorder with @barnesandnoble.com

John Galt & Scotland’s Forgotten Revolution 1 May, Irvine – £10 Dr Robert P. Irvine @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social will deliver this year’s John Galt Society lecture on “John Galt & Scotland’s Forgotten Revolution”. There will also be a buffet supper & drinks thejohngaltsociety.com/2026/03/19/2...

The King's and Theatre Royal Glasgow are running three Work in Theatre Days for ages 14-18 years on Tue 7 - Thu 9 April 2026

As I came over the Harden hill A whaup on the moor was whistling shrill In his pride to be first recorder Of new life stirred in the sleeping ling Of laughter and love and song—and Spring— And the first blue day on the Border. —Will H. Ogilvie, “The First Blue Day on the Border” #poem #poetry

There's only one week left for schools to apply for a fully-funded author residency through Live Literature School Residencies! Please share this incredible opportunity before our deadline passes.

Approaching the end of Women in Horror Month (though every month is WIHM...), but for now a wee thread convincing you to read my books based on the kind of horrors they unleash...! 👀🖤✨ linktr.ee/lyndseycroal 🧵

“I’ve loved the phrase to ‘spurrie-how’, to run as fast as a sparrowhawk flies, since I found it. It speaks again of that first reach of metaphor to what is known and what is seen and imagined.” ~ from ‘Biding’ by Amanda Thomson: irishpages.org/biding/ @asls.org.uk @paperboatswriters.bsky.social

Translation is a form of creation. The translator has to make decisions about preserving style over direct content, about cultural equivalence, about how to preserve a sense of pun or sentence structure from one language to the next. People who assume an LLM can do it are not understanding the task.

It's official. The Packet is out today! Thanks to NewCon Press and the brilliant Vincent Sammy for his outstanding cover art. You can grab one in person at Eastercon next week, buy online from the publisher's website or order from wherever you buy your books. www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.as...

The new @bavs-uk.bsky.social newsletter is looking gorgeous after its refresh! It also features our halloween workshops for kids at the historic Mackintosh at the Willow tearoom, where we explored the history & ethics of sugar consumption & what it means to be a 'sugar vampire'! Thanks BAVS! #C19th

Episode 5 of The Carrying Stream, ‘Gaelic Revival: From Czechia to the Gaìdhealtachd’, recently came out, featuring @poncarova.bsky.social Follow the link to access the full episode: pod.link/1865430519

250-odd years after Hastings, Robert the Bruce is fighting from the back of a Shetland pony – at least, according to 1066 & ALL THAT, by WC Sellar & RJ Yeatman (1930), who cite it as one of the various (all unfair) reasons for the English defeat at Bannockburn

Join us on Tuesday 21st April when @dougjohnstone.bsky.social will launch the reissue of The Ossians in conversation with @valmcdermid.bsky.social, who has written a new intro for it! 🎉 Sign up to join us in person or online: www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/doug-... @orendabooks.bsky.social

The 2026 @mcgill.ca Chair in Canadian-Scottish Studies Colloquium will take place on 10 April 2026. The keynote address will be delivered by Rob Dunbar, @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social & Chair of @bordnagaidhlig.bsky.social. The event is going to be livestreamed: tinyurl.com/3x8c6ry5 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇨🇦

Call for Papers: 'Politics, Place and Print Culture: The 14th International Walter Scott Conference', @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social, 28-30 June 2027, organised by @mckeever.bsky.social & team. Deadline for proposals: 1 October 2026. Details of financial support for PGRs to follow. tinyurl.com/yt2vj4x7

! 𝖬𝗎𝖼𝗄𝗅𝖾 𝖥𝗅𝗎𝗀𝗀𝖺 has been shortlisted for the 𝖠𝗎𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗋𝗌’ 𝖢𝗅𝗎𝖻 𝖡𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝖥𝗂𝗋𝗌𝗍 𝖭𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅 𝖠𝗐𝖺𝗋𝖽 (alongside all these beauties) 🥳🥹💜💚🫀. @faberbooks.bsky.social 🧑🏼‍🎤 🌊✨📚 the UK’s longest running prize for debut fiction ❤️‍🔥💘

University of Edinburgh Writer in Residence with Val McDermid 2 April @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social – free, ticketed This event marks the re-issue, 40 years on, of Val’s earliest crime series, the Lindsay Gordon novels: seminal works in the ‘queering of the genre’ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/university...

Dundee/Fife folkses - This feels *a ways* off, but it will creep up on us so get it in your diaries nooowww!!

Step inside a 1950s Glasgow washhouse on Hogmanay, where the water’s hot and the gossip’s even hotter...🧼🏔️ The official tour of Tony Roper’s The Steamie is coming to Pitlochry Festival Theatre! 🎟️ TICKETS ON SALE 10AM TOMORROW ➡️ https://pitlochryft.com/4bEWo0b

Hear my prayer, O non-existent God, accept these cries into thy nothingness, thou, who never leaves poor men unblessed by your false comfort… —Don Paterson, “Atheist Prayer” from THE ARCTIC, @faberbooks.bsky.social 2023 Today, March 23, is #AtheistDay #poem #poetry www.faber.co.uk/product/9780...

👀 Today's peek in the pages of our World Cup special issue: 📖 John Collins takes us behind the scenes at France '98 in a brilliant interview with Moira Gordon. 🛒 Magazine OUT NOW! To read the article in full and 20+ more, get yours here: tiny.cc/rgrz001

In times like these political poetry is more than a luxury. Come and hear some, as Shouting in the Tunnel launches in Edinburgh on April 14th! **Tickets from lighthousebookshop.com/events/shout...

Wonderful - unique - conversation between a French scholar-poet who writes in Scots and a Czech scholar-poet who writes in Gaelic. Paul and Petra provide a fresh European perspective on c20th Scotland, with beautiful recordings of Derick Thomson reading his poetry, and Petra hers

“I am a man upon the land, I am a selkie in the sea, And when I’m far and far frae land My hame is in the Sule Skerry” —The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry (traditional) 🎨: Vernon Hill, “The Great Sealchie of Sule Skerrie”, in Ballads Weird & Wonderful (1912) #poem #poetry #InternationalSealDay 🦭

My son has birds in his head. I know them now. I catch the pitch of their calls, their shrill cacophonies, their chitterings, their coos… —“Daedalus”, by Alastair Reid (1926–2014) – born 100 years ago #OTD, 22 March published in WEATHERING, @canongate.co.uk 1978 #poem #poetry 1/4

You’d know her house by the drawn blinds – by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall, the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry… —Robin Robertson, “At Roane Head” in the @lrb.co.uk, 14 August 2008 Today, 22 March, is #InternationalSealDay 🦭 #poem #poetry www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

📣 Applications open! Women’s History Scotland Research Bursary Up to £500 is available for Masters students, doctoral researchers, ECRs, and independent historians researching women’s and gender history 🗓 Deadline 31 May 2026 Details on how to apply 🔗 womenshistoryscotland.org/projects-and...

I found him wandering on the hill one hot blue afternoon. He looked as skinny as a nail, as pale-skinned as the moon… —Don Paterson, “The Poetry” published in RAIN, @faberbooks.bsky.social 2009 #WorldPoetryDay #poem #poetry www.faber.co.uk/product/9780...