BOOKMARK Book Festival
Perthshire's Book Festival
Message from Gail Wylie
BOOKMARK Book Festival 2023
With light eventually returning to us all after the long winter days, BOOKMARK is eager to start its 2023 programme.
Our first gathering is our AGM on Friday 10 March, 2.00pm, at St Catherine’s, when we’ll be able to meet again to talk over the highlights of 2022 and look ahead to what is coming in the months ahead. Kate Davies, from Adventure into Books, will be joining us at this meeting to entertain us with tales of being a bookseller.
We have two other Meet the Author dates scheduled, including the ticket launch for the October Festival. I’ll give further details of these once I have the guests confirmed. (One of the problems of trying to organise far in advance is co-ordinating authors’ diaries!) We will also be holding an event in Perth Library in September with Tippermuir Press to celebrate their book of poetry Perthshire 101.
Our Authors in Schools programme, always so popular with our local schools, will be happening again later in the year.
What I can reveal is the list of our 2023 Book of the Year Award. All six books are, as usual, chosen for maximum book group potential and guaranteed to provide plenty of scope for discussion. Our group of judges are currently reading their way through them and, I hope, finding it a challenge to choose an outright winner!
I’m delighted to let you all know that the first winner of our award, Rachel Joyce for Miss Benson’s Beetle, is one of our star guests at our Festival this October (7-8 October 2023)
Although the programme is still to be finalised, BOOKMARK will have its customary special mix of talks, including nature, memoir, history, crime. New guests to our Festival, among others, will be Don Paterson, Jim Crumley, Liam McIlvanney. Returning favourites include Sally Magnusson and Shona MacLean. More details will be published later but meanwhile two unmissable books are Don Paterson’s memoir of growing up in Dundee, Toy Fights or Shona MacLean’s The Bookseller of Inverness.
For yet more to read, Kate Davies posts a monthly excellent selection of new (and familiar) books to enjoy on this website.
As always, we look forward to welcoming you to BOOKMARK.
Book of the Year Award 2023 shortlist:
Paper Cup by Karen Campbell
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk
Sell Us the Rope by Stephen May
In the meantime, you can catch up with Kate's February book selection
here
Background:
BOOKMARK established in 2012, has developed a reputation for being a friendly, well organised Book Festival which offers a wide range of events to suit all interests.