A Blether O Books: Scotland Through Literature

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Join the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum this October as they welcome a selection of authors in this celebration of Scottish literature!

About A Blether O Books: Scotland Through Literature

Listed Under Books Events / Talks and Lectures Events

Saturday 26th October: A Blether O Books with Sara Sheridan
Sara Sheridan is a Glasgow-based writer and activist. She writes historical fiction and creative nonfiction and has written six novels based in the period 1820 – 1850.

The Fair Botanists, set in Edinburgh1822, has charmed critics and readers alike with the first edition having sold out in under a fortnight. It won Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year in 2022, as well as being chosen for the Queen’s Reading Room series 7.

Her latest book, The Secrets of Blythswood Square, is out in paperback in October.

Sara’s remapping of Scotland according to female history, Where are the Women?, was listed as of the David Hume Institute’s most important non-fiction books 2019. It contained 1200 stories of mostly forgotten female achievement.

Sara continues to campaign for more diverse memorialisation of women’s history. She is a regular contributor on BBC Radio Scotland and has also written two 5-part radio plays adapted from her own short stories – On Portobello Prom and Robert Burns: His Psychotherapy and Cure. Both of which have been broadcast on Radio 4.

Saturday 26th October: A Blether O Books with Thomas Clark
Thomas Clark is a writer, poet and translator working mainly in the Scots language.

His most recent and award winning book being a Scots translation of George Orwell's Animal Farm

He offers a fascinating journey through Orwell, Scots, and the language we use today asking if words still matter, if politicians can be trusted and if Scots still has a place in the modern world.

Sunday 27th October: A Blether O Books with Alex Renton
Join Alex Renton, author of Blood Legacy, as he considers Ayrshire, Burns, Slavery: a difficult legacy?

Alex Renton, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), is an author and journalist living in Edinburgh. He works primarily in reportage and investigation, for the BBC, the Times, the Guardian and Daily Mail.

His recent books include Blood Legacy: reckoning with a family's story of slavery (about the Fergusson and Hunter-Blair families of Ayrshire) and Stiff Upper Lip: secrets, crimes and the schooling of a ruling class.

His most recent radio series, In Dark Corners, won multiple awards and is available on BBC Sounds.

Sunday 27th October: A Blether O Books with Steven Veerapen
Born in Glasgow and raised in Paisley, Steven Veerapen is an author of historical fiction and nonfiction. His books include the Simon Danforth murder mysteries, set in the Scotland of the 1540s, and The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I.

Pursuing an interest in the sixteenth century, he was awarded a first-class Honours degree in English, focussing his dissertation on early modern representations of Henry VIII’s six wives. He then received a Masters in Renaissance studies, which looked at Renaissance-era visual and literary representations of the later Tudors, and a Ph.D. investigating Elizabethan slander. When not writing, he teaches English Literature at the University of Strathclyde.

During this talk, Steven discusses Historical Crime Fiction: from medieval murders to modernist mysteries and how historical crime fiction, as a popular genre, is written - from conjuring up relatable characters to authentic backgrounds with ghastly and blood drenched incidents.

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