Wigtown Book Festival Returns for 2015

To be far from the city is not to be detached from the great ideas and debates shaping society, argues Wigtown Book Festival – this year taking place between 25 September and 4 October. In fact it allows space for those discussions to take pace, for the ideas to breathe. 2015 hosts the 17th annual Book Festival in Wigtown, Scotland’s National Book Town – the title awarded by the Scottish Parliament in the mid-90s, rejuvenating the Borders town.

This year sees a continuation of a trend of ever improving programmes, even looking past the big names of Neil Mukherjee, Val McDermid and Janice Galloway. Above and beyond the poetry of our Makar Liz Lochhead,  the lyrical delights of Rally & Broad, and Don Paterson, amongst the foremost poets of his generation. Further highlights include Lars Mytting discussing the philosophy of chopping wood – as per the theme of Norwegian Wood, his best-seller from Norway which has shifted over 250,000 copies. The book, detailing the practicalities of chopping wood and how it can make your life better, has also inspired a primetime Friday night TV programme that included eight hours of a live burning grate. Sounds like the kind of man to get on with ex-KLF man and million pound arsonist Bill Drummond. He’s been travelling the world making beds of late and the Galloway lad plans to turn up at Wigtown in the guise of alter-ego Tenzing Scott Brown.

To honour the first anniversary of Alastair Reid's death, Wigtown is producing The Alastair Reid-athon, an all-day reading of his collected poetry and selected prose works from The New Yorker and elsewhere. Authors, and in the ever inclusive spirit of Wigtown, members of the public, will be reading the work. The 2015 festival also presents the first edition of The Midge, a Wigtown Book Festival production, inspired by New York-based storytelling group and global podcast hit The Moth, who spoke with The Skinny last year.

This is the second year of the Open Book, a unique project launched in Aug 2014 that invites writers, artists and thinkers to Scotland’s book town to run a bookshop for a short period of time. It is designed to bring new creative talent to Wigtown and to raise awareness of issues facing booksellers everywhere. The Festival are again opening up the experience to the public, having teamed up with Air B&B – making it possible for anyone to live the romantic dream of running a bookshop and live in the flat above it. 

Wigtown makes use of the local surroundings with Stuart Kelly’s Literary Pub Quiz, and the Galloway landscape, by offering up a few outdoor pursuits. These include sea-kayaking with explorer Robert Twigger, whose exploits have included canoeing across Canada in a birch-bark canoe, and an after-dark walk with park rangers, exploring the stars from the UK's darkest skies in Galloway Forest.

As ever, Wigtown offers the chance to explore ideas and authors, but also simply a town which is now celebrated as our book capital, which bursts into life each Autumn.

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Wigtown Book Festival 2015 runs from 25 Sep-4 Oct in locations across the town