Tickets for this year’s Ullapool Book Festival went on sale last week.
Among the guests coming to Ullapool are novelists Angus Peter Campbell (main image), Robert Alan Jamieson, Sally Magnusson and Malachy Tallack, poets Jo Shapcott and Roseanne Watt, journalists Neil Mackay and David Pratt and Melanie Reid, who will will be talking about her memoir ‘The World I Fell Out Of’. The festival takes place from Friday 10th May to Sunday 12th.
Poets Michael Pedersen and Hollie McNish join forces with cult music maker Withered Hand for a unique collective outing. The three will share their own work and some thoughts on their dear friend, the late Scott Hutchison. As a four piece, they appeared a couple of times as the Cold Turkey collective, whilst Pedersen and Hutchison were due to perform together at Ullapool Book Festival in 2018.

On Saturday morning the four shortlisted authors for the Highland Book Prize – Neil Ansell, Andrew Miller, Judith Ross Napier and Malachy Tallack – will read in a showcase session. And on Saturday evening the winner of the second Highland Book Prize, presented by The Highland Society of London, will be announced by the judges. This will be followed by a chaired session with the winning writer.
Most of the festival guests live in Scotland but the committee has continued its tradition of also having writers from outwith the UK. This year they are from Kathleen Winter (Canada), Volker Kutscher (Germany) and Penny Johnson (Palestine). In addition, the director of HeadRead, the Tallinn Literary Festival (Estonia) has been invited to Ullapool and the book festival hope this may result in some development of cultural links between the North West Highlands and the eastern Baltic.
The festival is in receipt of funding from Creative Scotland’s Open Project Fund and has also received sponsorship from other bodies and local businesses.