The Hebridean Book Festival at An Lanntair 29th October – 1st November

This year’s festival features launches by local writers which revolve and resolve
round memory and memoir. Ian Stephen’s debut novel A Book of Death and
Fish and An Island Girl’s Journey by Dolina Maclennan
Born in Marvig, Isle of Lewis, Dolina Maclennan is an outstanding singer, actress, and storyteller of
national, indeed international renown. She has received a lifetime award from the Saltire Society
for her contribution to Scottish cultural life. In this sensitive and very personal account, she looks
back on some of the forces which moulded her, from her childhood in South Lochs, a traditional
Gaelic-speaking community in rural Lewis, to her friendship with many of the great figures of the
Scottish literary and artistic scene over the past half century – including Hamish Henderson, Hugh
Macdiarmid, and Sorley Maclean.Ian Stephen is a writer, artist and sailor from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. After 15 years
in the coastguard service, he resigned in 1995, to work full-time in the arts. Since the late 70s his
wide-ranging work has been published in numerous UK journals, as well as internationally. The
Book of Death and Fish is an engaging novel is driven by its idiosyncratic narrator, but with
counterpoints from people he engages with – his father, mother, wife, daughter, friends. It’s a litany
of small histories witnessed during one individual lifetime. A vivid portrait of the islands comes into
being incrementally, transmitted through Peter’s diverse remembrances. Hebridean dialect and
fishermen’s argot texture his tales.
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Faclan this year features a stellar cast of writers, thinkers, historians and commentators. The
theme is not just ‘the past’ but how we view, relate to and engage with the past and how it affects
us. It encompasses the Great War, Empire, elegy, memoir and new writing.
Other highlights include:
 Charles Emmerson will speak about 1913 The World Before the Great War a meditation on how the
world might have looked otherwise, and Trevor Royle, advisor to the Government on the official
 Sandra Murray, one the Islands’ most well-known exports as a couturier, fashion and textile
designer will be in conversation to bequeath her vast experience of the industry and her own career.
 Robert Macfarlane will take centre stage on Saturday to speak about the hugely acclaimed The Old
Ways from 2012.
 John Keay will talk on his book The Great Arc, referencing Colonel Colin Mackenzie from
Stornoway, the first Surveyor General of India.
 Jay Griffiths Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape, is a visionary perspective on children’s place in
contemporary society and how it differs to previous lives and other societies.
For more details on Faclan please visit the website at http://www.faclan.org

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