Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh Reporter

14 hours ago

It's rarely easy for new writers to get their work noticed. Mainstream publishers prefer to rely on established names – and increasingly, celebrities – to boost their sales figures, and indy publishers have far less cash to burn.
To address the issues facing emerging authors, the Scottish Book Trust, Jenny Brown Associates, New Writing North and The Women's Prize Trust have each created awards offering financial support and mentoring.
This August Edinburgh International Book Festival has partnered with some of these leading talent spotters to run Fresh Words, a special series in which award recipients will read their work in public.
On Wednesday I attended one of the four sessions, to hear from new writers Susan Kemp, Margherita Still, Caroline Grebnell, Jade Mitchell and Robbie MacLeoid.
Susan Kemp is a Senior Lecturer in Film, Exhibition and Curation at the University of Edinburgh. Greenwash, her environmental thriller, inspired by her love of the outdoors and her experience of beating on a grouse moor, has been Highly Commended by Jenny Brown Associates in their 2025 Debut Writers Over 50 Award.
Susan read a wonderfully evocative extract from her novel, in which a golden eagle is murdered in an Angus glen. As Jessie, a keeper's daughter, travels back to Glen Heughie to start a new job as a wildlife crime investigator, she remembers the bullying she suffered on the school bus, and the eagle that flew directly overhead, casting its magnificent shadow.
Queer writer, songwriter and academic Robbie MacLeoid is an award-winning creative practitioner in Gaelic and English. One of his many talents is streaming video games into Gaelic, but he also teaches workshops, works as a translator and consultant and has performed at many festivals. His work explores queerness, anti-colonialism, feminism, and play. In 2023 he won a Scottish Book Trust Gaelic New Writer's Award.
Robbie read some of his poems, in Gaelic and in English, though he warned us that the Gaelic version was sometimes better!
'I wear my Gaelic like my queerness/You'd never know it to look at me.'
Caroline Grebnell is a Supervising Art Director in the film and TV industry. She has a Masters in Creative Writing (with Distinction) from Napier University and her stories have been shortlisted for many awards. Her novel Tromp l'oeil, has been longlisted for the Jenny Brown Associates Debut Writers Over 50 Award. It follows a disparate collection of women in nineteenth century London as they concoct an elaborate sting to rid the confectioner's wife of her murderous, charlatan husband.
Caroline read an intriguing extract, in which a woman dressed as a man arrives by carriage at a Whitechapel theatre. Some of her clothes – her boots, her beaver top hat – have come from a brothel. The stunning interior of the building, lit by chandeliers, impresses her, but she knows that 'this was art and this was science, it was not magic or witchcraft.'
Scots Italian Margherita Still works as an Education Consultant. She won the Napier University Medal for her Creative Writing Masters, and recently started Edinburgh Sparks, an open mic for prose writers to share their fiction or nonfiction. Her stories have been published in Scottish Book Trust anthologies and elsewhere. Margherita's new novel has been shortlisted for the 2025 Jenny Brown Associates Debut Writers Over 50 Award.
Alex Anderson is Not Dead is about a dad who knows he is dying and wants to make sure his children won't lose their home. He asks his estranged brother for help to conceal his death so that the council won't repossess the house, leading to a very funny conversation about patios, freezers and gangsters. The inspiration for Alex Anderson in Not Dead came from Margherita's time teaching in Edinburgh and working with refugees and other challenged families. She says,
'If someone tells you they want to write, encourage them – because I've been lucky to have nothing but encouragement all through.'
Jade Mitchell, a Glasgow-based writer and poet, is the recipient of a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust. She has an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Strathclyde, where she was awarded the Brian Hamill Common Breath Prize for her writing. Her poetry can be found in online publications, she performs at festivals, and wrote her first poetry film The Door in collaboration with Moot Point Collective. Jade is now working on her first short story collection; her reading for Fresh Words certainly made us all think. Here, I think, is the gist,
Jessica is attending a meeting. It's a meeting of the Lovers to Worms Alliance. Transformations have been taking place, and one of them was Jessica's wife Bethany. Now Bethany lives in a terrarium. Jessica's not the only one whose partner has somewhat changed; we meet Christopher, who's lost his boyfriend David in the garden ('Did a seagull take him?'), and an older lady who finds life much more peaceful without her pre-transformation husband.
And if that doesn't pique your interest, I'm not sure what will.
Fresh Words continues on Tuesday 19 August with new writers Henry Bell, Sarah Forbes Stewart, Debora Maité, Julie Rea, and Sophie Underwood, and on Friday 22 August, when Lorna Elcock, Rukky Brume, Rue Baldry. Taylor Dyson and Nasim Rebecca Asl will read from their work.
The Fresh Words sessions are free to attend, and you are invited to bring along your lunch – but you do need a ticket, so book one here for 19 August and here for 22 August.
Edinburgh International Book Festival runs until 24 August at Edinburgh Futures Institute, Lauriston Place, McEwan Hall, Teviot Place and Elliott's Studio, 21 Sciennes Road.
© 2024 Martin McAdam
Like this:
Like
Related