FESTIVAL BOOKS | Scottish Writers
NOVEL TALENTS
As Charlotte Square prepares to host an array of literary talents from around the globe, Karyn Dougan celebrates four local writers
appearing at this year’s festival
28 THE LIST FESTIVAL 8–15 Aug 2013
As some of the world’s i nest writers prepare for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, there’s ample local talent to be found as part of this year’s 30th anniversary celebrations.
According to critic Tom Leonard, Allan Wilson ‘reads like the real thing’. His debut, a collection of short stories entitled Wasted In Love, was a perceptive and compassionate exploration of the human condition, using stark prose and dark humour to expose the tragedy of love. Still concerned with this theme of love and its effect on the ordinary and the mundane, Wilson admits it is the crucial inspiration behind his writing.
‘Kafka said: “there’s an ini nite amount of hope in the universe, but not for us”. Hard to accept but I think it’s true. So then you say, what’s the point in my time here? And for me it comes down to relationships. There’s no hope except in each other.’ No doubt this has inspired his next novel, Meat, for which he was awarded a Dewar Arts Award in 2012. He refuses to tie himself down to one project, though – another novel, short stories, plays and a non- i ction project with his granddad are all on the horizon.
Despite her uncertainty and the ‘insubstantial response to very real political problems,’ previous New Writers Award winner Krystelle Bamford found a touching universality in poetry during her time at the Reel Iraq festival. ‘You realise a country’s political problems don’t strip away the peculiar concerns that give poetry traction,’ Bamford explains. ‘They suddenly seem, in a way hard to achieve through any other medium, like something that could happen to you.’
Celebrating the culture of a country potentially obscured by media headlines, Reel Iraq’s goal is to increase communication between Iraq and countries like the UK through the arts. Bamford and three other Scottish poets met and performed with their Iraqi counterparts, translating and re-creating each other’s work – something she believes