Flash Fiction Competition

A unique opportunity for writers in Dumfries & Galloway: have your short short story illustrated by a specially commissioned artwork by artist Andrew Foley. And all you need to do is write 200 cracking words…

1st prize:
Original artwork illustrating the winning story
by artist Andrew Foley

2 runner-up prizes:
‘Anthropology’ by Dan Rhodes

and
the best ten stories will be recorded
for the D&G Writer’s Podcast.

NB The fiction competition is only open to local writers, so you’ll need to join the forum (click here and then on the 'forum' link, or contact Andrew Forster on 01387 253383)

Closing date: Friday 4th August

Join the D&G Writers' Forum

The Dumfries & Galloway Writers’ Forum is now up and running, and we’re launching it with a flash fiction competition with a fabulous and unique prize – an original artwork illustrating the winning story by artist Andrew Foley. See below for details.

Visit the forum at the regional Writers' Hub, www.dgcommunity.net/writers, and click on the ‘forum’ link. Then click on the ‘Writers’ Practice Forum’ for more info.

To post a message you first need to join the forum:
Click on 'register' (top of the hub page) and follow the instructions.

The flash fiction competition is only open to writers living in the region.

James Robertson Reading - Gideon Mack

Tuesday 20th June, 7pm
Lochthorn Library, Dumfries


Scottish novelist and poet James Robertson will be holding a local launch for his new novel, The Testament of Gideon Mack, published by Penguin. Don't miss this chance to hear one of the country's literary stars read from a major new work.

'Written with great lyricism, tight pacing, superlative storytelling and immense imaginative power, this is Robertson's most ambitious and accessible novel to date.'

Caerlaverock writer strikes orange!

Many congratulations to Caerlaverock writer and ecologist Jackie Galley, who has made it onto the Scotsman/Orange 2006 short-list with her short story, ‘The Paper Boy’. This will be published in the competition anthology, ‘Work’, and is eligible to go forward to the major prize, which will be awarded at a ceremony in Edinburgh in July.

Poetry Launch with Judi Benson

Thursday 1st June
Town House Hotel, Annan Road
Dumfries

Judi Benson, Writing Fellow at Dumfries Royal Infirmary is holding a reading at the Town House Hotel (on Annan Road) on Thursday 1st June, to introduce her collection, ‘The Thin Places’. There will also be some opportunities to read from the floor.

Look out also for Judi's colourful display of over 100 pompoms and poems in the foyer at the Ewart Library, Dumfries. These were gathered during her recent project at the Infirmary, where she works within the Oncology Department, and they'll be on view until May 22nd.

Gorgeous Avatar

Theatre Royal, Dumfries Monday 29th May 7:30pm Tickets £10.00/ £8.00 concession

The Traverse Theatre - Scotland's New Writing Theatre - presents
'Gorgeous Avatar' by Jules Horne

Debut play by D & G's Virtual Writer in Residence, directed by Philip Howard, and featuring Pauline Knowles, John Kazek, Una McLean and Patrick Hoffman.

Amy's living the dream. A country hideaway, online home-working, and everything delivered right to her door. There's little reason to go beyond the garden gate. She's even found romance on the internet. High tech, long distance, low maintenance. Except he's real and he's on a flight somewhere over the Atlantic. Meanwhile, neighbours Dan and Rose are living the nightmare. With so much space, how come there's so little room to manoeuvre? And can a makeover do more than paper over the cracks?Gorgeous Avatar is a wry, tender and fantastical story of love and loneliness in the digital age - and all the things that Amazon can't deliver.

gorgeous photo gallery

production blog

Poetry Doubles Special - Duffy & Feaver

Carol Ann Duffy and Vicki Feaver
Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre, Dumfries
Sunday 11 June 7:00pm

It gives us great pleasure to present two of Britain's finest women poets.

Carol Ann Duffy won the TS Eliot prize this year for her collection 'Rapture'. She is one of Britain's most popular poets and performers, with seven collections of poetry, most recently the TS Eliot prize-winning 'Rapture'.

Vicki Feaver has recently brought out a new collection with Cape, 'The Book of Blood', her first collection for 12 years.

This promises to be a memorable night, and is sure to sell out, so do book
early to avoid disappointment.

Tickets £8.00 from Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association on 01387 253383 or andrew@dgaa.net

Rab Wilson Launches New Scots Poetry Collection

Thurs 25th May, 7pm : Sanquhar Bookshop
Fri 26 May, 7pm : Poosie Nansies, 21 Loudon Street, Mauchline
27 May, 2pm : The Bookshop, Wigtown
30 May, 6pm : Ottakars, Glasgow
31 May, 6pm : Poetry in the Parliament, Edinburgh
9 June, 7.30 pm: Leith Festival, The Lighthouse pub on the shore
24 July, 7.30pm : Crail Arts Fest, Crail Town Hall

Our traditional language could hardly have a more eloquent exponent.
LESLEY DUNCAN, THE HERALD

Sanquhar poet Rab Wilson's new collection, Accent o the Mind, is published by Edinburgh's Luath Press.

Hear Rab read the title poem and other work in Scots on the Scottish Writers' Podcast, recorded at the BBC Scotland studios in Dumfries. More on Rab Wilson's work...

After calls for the Scottish Executive to take action to ensure Scots is recognised as a language, Accent o the Mind is a timely and contemporary collection, chiefly in the Scots tongue.

Rab Wilson covers the variety of modern Scottish life through refreshingly honest and often humorous poetry, encompassing history, text messaging, politics, asylum-seeking hedgehogs and connoisseurs of Buckfast...

His set of 15 interlinked sonnets, Cormilligan, about a late example of the Clearances in the south-west, has rightly been seen as a tour de force, combining, as it does, acute humanity and sense of landscape with technical virtuosity. Somewhaur in the Daurk, his series of sonnets inspired by the Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985, gives the participants and their womenfolk a voice and a dignity that demand sympathy, regardless of political viewpoints.

The poems he wrote as Wigtown Bard range from the historical to the satirical and enlivened Wigtown’s literary festival in 2004. Individual poems, whether set in the local supermarket or the former mining towns of his youth, have humour, pathos, sometimes indignation, and always a warm immediacy.

Rab Wilson is a free spirit who speaks and writes in Scots (in everyday letters and emails as well as poetry) with complete ease and unselfconsciousness. This inspirational new collection consolidates Rab Wilson’s position as one of Scotland’s leading poets and plays a part in the reinvigoration of the Scots language in modern Scottish society.