Diverted to Split & The Ayrshire Nestling Book Launch

Name: Diverted to Split & The Ayrshire Nestling Book Launch
Start: 2024-11-27T19:00:00+00:00
End: 2024-11-27T20:30:00+00:00
Location: Avant Garde Music Bar & Restaurant

Schedule

Wed Nov 27 2024 at 07:00 pm to 08:30 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

Avant Garde Music Bar & Restaurant | Glasgow, SC

Glasgow double launch of Hugh McMillan’s Diverted to Split and Gerry Cambridge’s The Ayrshire Nestling
About this Event

An evening of poetry and prose with Gerry Cambridge and Hugh McMillan plus guests Eleanor Tennyson, Julie McNeill and Kirsten MacQuarrie

Hugh and Gerry will be joined by Julie McNeill, Eleanor Tennyson and Kirsten MacQuarrie

Hugh McMillan is a well published, anthologised and broadcast poet, writer and performer who lives in South-West Scotland. His latest collection ‘Diverted to Split’, was published by Luath Press in 2024. In 2021 he was appointed editor of the Scottish Poetry Library’s anthology ‘Best Scottish Poems’ and was also chosen to be a Saltire Society judge for Best Scottish Poetry Collection of the Year. He currently chairs this panel. His cult classic ‘McMillan’s Galloway’ was reprinted in paperback form in May 2023.

Kirsten MacQuarrie is a writer and librarian from Glasgow whose debut novel, Remember the Rowan, was published by Ringwood in September 2024. Her prose and poetry have also been published by New Writing Scotland, the Scottish Poetry Library, Gutter Magazine, Scottish PEN, the Women's History Network, Bluestocking Oxford, Postbox Magazine, Speculative Books, Edinburgh Literary Salon and others. Kirsten has been shortlisted for a Vogue Magazine Young Talent Award, selected as an Editor's Choice for the John Byrne Award, and twice winner of the Glasgow Women's Library Bold Types Poetry Prize. She has also served twice as a Non-Fiction judge for Scotland's National Book Awards.

His website is at https://www.hughmcmillanwriter.co.uk/

Gerry Cambridge’s six books of poetry include Notes for Lighting a Fire (2012) and The Light Acknowledgers & Other Poems (2019), both from HappenStancePress. He founded The Dark Horse, Scotland’s leading poetry journal, in 1995. He is also an essayist, print designer, typographer, and former nature photographer. He lived in a caravan in Ayrshire for twenty years, then left to become Brownsbank Fellow in MacDiarmid’s former home for 1997–1999. As a critic he contributed ten essays to the four-volume Oxford Encyclopaedia of American Literature(2004) and wrote nine 12,000-word monograph essays for the Gale/Charles Scribner’s Sons textbook series British Writers and American Writers between 2000 and 2006. In his mid-twenties he was, as far as he knows, one of the youngest-ever regular freelancers—specialising in nature articles—for the UK edition of The Reader’s Digest magazine, which at the time (the 1980s) had a monthly circulation of 1.5 million copies. An Honorary Fellow of the Association of Scottish Literature, he received a Cholmondeley Award for his poetry, administered by the Society of Authors in London, in June 2024. His most recent book is The Ayrshire Nestling (Tringa Press, 2024), a prose memoir about growing up in the county.

Julie McNeill is based in Glasgow, Scotland. She is the author of poetry collections ‘We Are Scottish Football’ (Luath Press 2024); ‘Something Small’ (Drunk Muse Press 2023); ‘Ragged Rainbows’ (HydridDreich 2022) and the award winning Children’s nonfiction book ‘Mission Dyslexia’ (JKPBooks 2022). She is the editor of ‘A Most Unsuitable Game’ (Tippermuir Press 2024) exploring the history and stories of women’s football in Scotland through poetry and prose.

She was commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library to design ‘Poetry Unwrapped’ a suite of workshops and resources for inspiring young neurodiverse writers. She wrote the poem ‘We are Scottish Football’ commissioned by BBC Sport for the start of the football season 2022/23 and has recently been awarded a Creative Scotland grant to write a poetry collection around the stories of the Paisley Mill workers.

Her new collection ‘Love Goes North’ will be published by Luath Press in 2025. She is part of the editorial team at Drunk Muse Press based in the North East of Scotland.

Julie is the Poet-in-residence for St Mirren FC charitable trust and Makar of the Hampden Collection. The first female poet attached to a professional football club (that we know of) anywhere in the world. She is has won or been placed in The Burrell Collection Hidden Gems Poetry Prize, Bold Types Poetry Prize and Snack Magazine/ Nutmeg Football Poetry Prize.

Eleanor Tennyson is a writer from London. Awarded the Shelia Templeton Bursary in 2024, her work can be found or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, berlin.lit, Worm’s Magazine, Montez Press Radio, The Quaterless Review, Freedom Press, Paprika, and more. She has shown at The Pipe Factory in Glasgow and Stroud Valley Artspace. She is the author of The Hairy Manifesto, which she published with the support of Creative Scotland. She received her Poetry MFA from Columbia University.
Her debut publication is forthcoming with Drunk Muse Press in 2025.