Book festival ready to welcome back writers and fans
Wigtown Book Festival is to welcome audiences and authors back to Scotland’s National Book Town this autumn following last year’s digital-only event.
Taking Hello Stranger as its theme, the 2021 festival, taking place from September 22 to October 4, will be two days longer than in previous years, with more than 140 events for adults and young people, around half the number available pre-coronavirus.
At the town’s heart will be a new, free-to-enter outdoor venue, The Gardens, with a big screen, and seating, which aims to be Wigtown’s answer to Wimbledon’s Murray Mound. Selected live audience events will also be streamed from Wigtown to audiences around the world.
Authors due to attend the Dumfries & Galloway event include Val Mcdermid, Francis Spufford and Salena Godden, philosopher AC Grayling, biographer Emma Soames and broadcaster Rory Cellan-jones. Other additions to the line-up include Saltmarsh walks with Saltire Award-winning author Stephen Rutt, and the announcement of the new Anne Brown Essay Prize for Scotland.
Artistic director Adrian Turpin said: “This year’s festival is all about the joy of being together again, although it will be bittersweet given the friends we’ve lost since the last time we gathered.
“As well as providing a relaxed outdoor space at this time, we hope The Gardens venue will help open up the event to the widest possible audience. The lack of walls is symbolic as well as physical.”