John O’Groats Development Trust Book Festival 2018

Caithness has a strong literary connection, sadly, however, people of Caithness who have a love of writing and reading have to travel to attend book festivals. The Trust decided that it would be good to organise a festival for the area, and thus the John O’Groats Book Festival was born. The Book Festival would try to attract award writing writers to Caithness, as well as providing an opportunity to discover new authors and learn from the authors.

A grant of £3380 from the Stroupster Community Fund, enabled the organisers to book 4 award-winning authors, Christopher Brookmyre, James Hunter, Andrew Greig and Theresa Breslin to attend the inaugural meeting.

The festival weekend was a great success for not only for literary lovers but also local businesses who saw an increase in takings over the weekend. With over 250 people attending the festivals, there was plenty of opportunities to learn about writing or be introduced to new authors, and for local authors had the chance to learn from established writers.

The first Book Festival was deliberately kept fairly low key to learn from the experience and take that forward to the next one. Planning is now in place for future festivals.

The festival is really about giving locals the opportunity to engage with mainline authors 

 

Ian Leith, festival organiser

Inaugural festivals are always something you approach with some trepidation, but from the minute I got here it has been such a warm welcome and such a beautiful setting. The audiences have been large and enthusiastic and very warm, very responsive and they’ve made me feel very welcome. I will be speaking warmly of the festival when I go back south 

 

Chris Brookmyre