Written by Jenni Calder, Scottish PEN, co-organiser of ‘Women on the Edge’ On 6 March six writers are getting together at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities to talk about ‘Women on the Edge’. The all-day event marks International Women’s Day (on 8 March) and has now become an annual […]

[View the story “January Roundup” on Storify]

This column by Scottish PEN’s president Drew Campbell appeared in The National on the 8th of January 2015. Find a digital edition here: http://www.thenational.scot/ and find them on Twitter at @ScotNational Liberty or death? As I suspect many people were when they heard of the murders in Paris yesterday the news was so shocking, so horrifying I was almost at […]

As yesterday’s horrific events in Paris unfolded the airwaves and social media filled with shock and outrage, and rightly so. No one should be in doubt that these murders were highly cynical politically motivated actions calculated not only to silence the victims but the wider world. When we think of the people gunned down as they worked in their offices, […]

Zoë Wicomb presents “Writing and the Stranger” Transcript of talk These days the foreigner is much discussed in political discourse, but I am going to say a few words on the foreigner in relation to writing and, in doing so, revisit a lecture I gave at the University of Rome some 10 years ago. At the risk of sounding […]

The Clutha crash – and poet John McGarrigle  Author and journalist Jean Rafferty shares her reflections on the Clutha helicopter crash and the Scottish poet John McGarrigle, one of those who died in the wreckage of the Glasgow pub. Jean’s sister manages the Scotia, sister pub to the Clutha.  The picture of Billy Connolly on […]

  Nalini Paul, poet and writer – India-born and later brought up in Canada before moving to Scotland twenty years ago – describes her personal journey in which themes of home and identity feature in her writing: poetry, a novel, and work for the stage and film commissions My writing journey began the moment I first […]

Poets of Protest A number of films for Al Jazeera are made by the (now Edinburgh-based) young Iranian filmmaker, Roxana Vilk. On Wednesday 20 November, she will be presenting and discussing her work at a meeting of the Scottish Poetry Association, that will take place at the Scottish Poetry Library, Canongate, Edinburgh. Dr Mario Relich introduces her work and […]