BOOKMARK Book Festival
Perthshire's Book Festival
New Year 2021 Message
BOOKMARK is looking for new ways to engage with our friends, members, writers and publishers. Despite all the difficulties of 2020, we inaugurated a Book of the Year Award which proved to be really successful. (All Book of the Year Award titles are available from the excellent Blairgowrie Library and I was delighted to hear that there was great interest in these books) We can now safely say that our bank of writers, agents, publishers and chairs has grown simply because we have proved willing to promote them in the most trying of circumstances. Every writer of this award, along with all of those who could not attend any of our proposed events, has shown willingness, indeed some of them great enthusiasm, to come to Blairgowrie when they can.
As I write this at the beginning of January 2021, we still have no idea when this will be or what sort of restrictions will be placed on numbers or the type of venue we can hold events in. All I can say is that when we CAN have a live event, we will
Meanwhile, we are looking into the possibilities of holding on-line ‘Meet the Author’ sessions. What we are determined to do is maintain the quality, not only of the guests we invite, but the way our events are organised. Any on-line event will be done with a high standard of professional advice and input. All I ask is for your patience until we can guarantee this.
To keep the BOOKMARK spirit going, a selection of books is posted each month on our website, and by Jan on our Facebook page. Each book in 2021 will have something to do with the month (for instance January books, like Janus, look to the past and to the future. (If you are a member of a book group, remember that all books are chosen to stimulate good book group discussions and are available on either Kindle or hard copy.)
The great thing about books is that we can all become armchair travellers whatever type of book we choose to read. So until we can all meet again in person, I wish you a good few weeks, or months, of going to new places, meeting new people, engaging in all sorts of activities – through the pages of our books.
Gail Wylie
BOOKMARK Chair
