McLellan Book Festival: Friday 4th – Sunday 6th September
Friday 4th September: Corrie Hall 7.30pm
McLellan Poetry Prize Gig with readings from this year’s judge, Gerda Stevenson and prize winners.
Music with Heather McLeod and Mark Harwood.
Admission £10 (Under 18s free)
Saturday 5th September: Corrie Hall 11am-3pm
Poetry Workshop with Gerda Stevenson.
Admission £20.00 - to take part please book with Cicely Gill (cicelym39@gmail.com)
Saturday 5th September: Brodick Hall
11am–12pm: Jim Crumley
1.30pm–2.30pm: Ajay Close
3.30pm–5.30pm: Andrew Greig and Lesley Glaister
7.30pm–8.30pm: Sally Magnusson and Kirsty Wark
Sunday 6th September: Brodick Hall
2pm-3pm: Amy Liptrot
4pm-5pm: M.K. Hardy
7.30pm–9.30pm: Book Festival Finale. Short Stories and Music with Brean Hammond, John Inglis, Tim Pomeroy and Keith Robertson
Tickets: Admission price is £10.00 per session but a Festival Ticket is £50.00.This covers entrance to all Book Festival events from Friday 4th - Sunday 6th September. Entrance free to under 18s and those in full time education.
Tickets available online on Ticket Source here and at the door.
McLellan Book Festival Authors 2026
Rossini Messe Solennelle
Sunday 30th August: Community Theatre Arran High School
2.30pm
Rossini’s glorious mass with McLellan Festival Chorus with conductor, Andrew Nunn.
Admission £15 (Under 18s free)
Nature Unbound
Thursday 3rd September: Community Theatre Arran High School
7.30pm
A concert celebrating nature with Deborah Nemko including pieces by Rachmaninov, Gershwin, McDowell and Frances Poulenc’s The Story of Babar with narrator Alice Maxwell.
Admission £15 (Under 18s free)
McLellan Book Festival Programme 2026
McLellan Poetry Prize Gig
Friday 4th September: Corrie & Sannox Village Hall
7.30pm
McLellan Poetry Prize Gig with readings from this year’s judge, Gerda Stevenson and prize winners.
Music with Heather McLeod and Mark Harwood.
Admission £10 (Under 18s free)
Poetry Workshop
Saturday 5th September: Corrie & Sannox Village Hall
11am-3pm
Poetry Workshop with Gerda Stevenson.
Gerda Stevenson is an award-winning Scottish writer (in English and Scots), as well as actor, film and theatre director, and singer/songwriter. She has presented her poetry and prose at literary festivals throughout the UK and across Europe. Her stage play, FEDERER VERSUS MURRAY toured to New York, sponsored by the Scottish Government.
Her poetry collections include: IF THIS WERE REAL, and QUINES: Poems in Tribute to Women of Scotland (both also published in Rome by Edizioni Ensemble in Italian translations), TOMORROW’S FEAST, and two collections of short stories, LETTING GO, and CAT WUMMAN.
Nominations include: for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award (New York), the Trad Awards as Scots Singer of the Year for an album of her own songs, Night Touches Day, and three times for the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland.
The founder of Scotland’s leading women’s theatre company, Stellar Quines, she has directed and appeared in many theatre productions and films, including Braveheart, winning BAFTA for her performance in Margaret Tait’s feature film Blue Black Permanent.
Admission £20.00 - to take part please book with Cicely Gill (cicelym39@gmail.com)
Jim Crumley
Saturday 5th September: Brodick Hall
11am–12pm
Jim Crumley has been a full-time Scottish nature writer for 38 years and is the author of more than 40 books.
His most recent title, Symphonic: Harmony in Nature and Why It Matters, was published by Saraband in February this year. Previous titles with Saraband include his seasons quartet – The Nature of Autumn, The Nature of Winter, The Nature of Spring (a Radio Four Book of the Week choice) and The Nature of Summer. The seasons books were edited and reimagined by the author into a single volume edition, Seasons of Storm and Wonder, with a foreword by Kathleen Jamie.
Also published in 2026 was a new edition of Jim’s 2010 book, The Last Wolf, published by Birlinn.
More details of these and his extensive backlist are available on the website, www.jimcrumleynature.com
You can also read Jim every month in The Scots Magazine.
Ajay Close
Saturday 5th September: Brodick Hall
1.30pm–2.30pm
Ajay Close’s debut novel, Official and Doubtful, was longlisted for the Orange Prize. A Petrol Scented Spring, about the suffragettes force-fed in Perth, was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Her seventh novel, What Doesn’t Kill Us, based on the Yorkshire Ripper killings and the feminist fightback across the north of England, was named Scottish Fiction Book of the Year. Her first career was in journalism, where she won many awards.
How much has really changed since the sexist 1970s? Join Ajay for an illustrated talk about the real people and events behind this gripping tale of murder, revolutionary feminism, unlikely friendships and divided loyalties.
Andrew Greig and Lesley Glaister
Saturday 5th September: Brodick Hall
3.30pm–5.30pm
Andrew Greig
Andrew Greig has written twenty-plus collections of poetry, novels and non-fiction. He and novelist Lesley Glaister live in Edinburgh and Orkney. His widely-enjoyed memoir At the Loch of the Green Corrie is an appreciation of Norman MacCaig, Assynt, poetry, fly fishing, friendship – and Life.
Andrew will read from and talk about ROSE NICOLSON his most recent Scottish Reformation novel, with a preview from its conclusion, PADUA.
Lesley Glaister
Lesley Glaister is the prize-winning author of seventeen novels, a stage play, dramas for BBC radio drama, and two poetry pamphlets, as well as numerous short stories. She works as a writing mentor and teacher of creative writing, lives in Edinburgh and is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Lesley is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Lesley will talk about, and read from, her latest novels, Blasted Things and A Particular Man, with perhaps a preview of her forthcoming novel, Such A Good Girl.
Sally Magnusson and Kirsty Wark
Saturday 5th September: Brodick Hall
7.30pm–8.30pm
Sally Magnusson
Bestselling author, journalist and broadcaster Sally Magnusson has written several books for adults and children, most recently her Sunday Times bestseller Where Memories Go (2014) about her mother's dementia, The Sealwoman's Gift (2018), her acclaimed debut novel, The Ninth Child (2020) and Music in the Dark (2022). Sally lives outside Glasgow.
Kirsty Wark
Kirsty Wark is a journalist, broadcaster and writer who has presented a wide range of BBC programmes for more than twenty five years, from the ground-breaking Late Show to the weekly arts and cultural review show The Review Show and the nightly current affairs show Newsnight. Born in Dumfries and educated in Ayr, Scotland, Kirsty now lives in Glasgow.
Amy Liptrot
Sunday 6th September: Brodick Hall
2pm-3pm
Amy Liptrot grew up on a sheep farm in Orkney, Scotland and has written two bestselling memoirs: THE OUTRUN (2016) and THE INSTANT (2022). The Outrun won the Wainwright Prize for nature writing and the PEN Ackerely Prize for memoir, has been translated into 15 languages and adapted into a film starring Saoirse Ronan. Her book about seaweed THE TANGLES will be published next year. She lives in Yorkshire.
M.K. Hardy
Sunday 6th September: Brodick Hall
4pm-5pm
Morag Hannah and Erin Hardee are two geeky women who write under the penname MK Hardy. With backgrounds ranging from museum interpretation to web design, and from science communication to ghost tours, they are devoted to storytelling in almost every aspect of their lives and work. When they are not telling stories they can be found singing in choirs, foraging for fungi, and working on their 1880s fixer-upper. Their debut Scottish historical gothic novel The Needfire released in July 2025, and The Haunting of Avis Lovelock, a Victorian supernatural mystery, in August 2026, both from Solaris
Book Festival Finale
Sunday 6th September: Brodick Hall
7.30pm–9.30pm
Short Stories and Music with Brean Hammond, John Inglis, Tim Pomeroy and Keith Robertson.
Brean Hammond: Scriptwriter and Narrator
Brean Hammond is Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of many books and articles on literary history from Shakespeare to Byron. He is best-known in Shakespearean circles for his publication of the ‘lost’ Shakespeare play Double Falsehood in the Arden Shakespeare series (2010).
He also writes prose fiction and theatre pieces. His play Ben and Jamie was performed in St. Andrews Byre Theatre in 2016. His music-theatre play Master Byrd has been widely performed in England and overseas in venues including St. Wulfram’s Grantham, Southwell Minster, Ely and Chelmsford Cathedrals and Trinity College, Cambridge. It will be performed in 2026 at the Stour Festival by the Renaissance Singers with Vincent Franklin playing Byrd, and at the Guernsey Music Festival by Stile Antico with Brean Hammond in the role of Byrd. To learn more about Master Byrd, please visit: https://www.renaissancesingers.com/writing-master-byrd
Currently he is writing a narrative about Ralph Vaughan Williams, a novel about the coming of a solar farm to a village community and a series of short stories about growing up in Edinburgh.
John Inglis
John Inglis has lived on Arran for 27 years after a career as an art teacher. He has published a novella, “Finvola” about a woman living in the Highlands in the sixteenth century at a time of clan wars in Ireland. It is on sale in Corrie bookshop.
His series of twelve vernacular “Post War Tales” are written phonetically and intended to be read aloud. They are written as though through the eyes of children but meant for adults. The language is the west of Scotland, working class vernacular. Hopefully they recreate the attitudes and concerns of a bygone age including the joys, suffering and poverty a few years after the end of the second world war. Football, steam railways, the end of rationing and the horror of primary school all seen through the anxiety and humour of children.
2024 saw the first ever McLellan Book Festival. Watch the video for highlights of this fantastic event!
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