Doubling Back…and Walking On. Linda Cracknell: writer and adventurer.

Linda Cracknell’s book Doubling Back: Paths trodden in memory (a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week in 2014) is reissued with new material this year and she’s travelling from Aberfeldy to speak about it at our Book Festival. Don’t be surprised if she walks here: she’s renowned for her long walks, about which she writes in her other recent book Writing Landscape: Taking Note, Making Notes.

Linda says her work - whether fiction or non-fiction – is inspired by place and is often developed with her boots on. In Doubling Back, she follows writers and relatives and retreads ways formerly trodden by drovers, saints and adventurers. Each walk reawakens connections, beliefs and memories.

Linda moved to Scotland in 1990 and began writing a few years later, beginning with a Saltire-nominated short story collection Life Drawing whilst working for the World Wide Fund for Nature. She took the risk of becoming a full-time writer in 2002.

In between writing and researching her books she runs highly enjoyable creative writing workshops following Susan Sontag’s advice to, ‘Love words, agonise over sentences, and pay attention to the world’.

Host or Publisher Pentlands Book Festival