I’ll be reading alongside Christina Neuwirth, Daniel Shand and Russell Jones at INK: A Celebration of Expression in Words and Tattoos, as part of the Festival of Creative Learning at 50 George Square. The event is at 6pm on Monday 20 February, it’s a free but ticketed event, you can reserve tickets here.

CHRISTINA NEUWIRTH was born in Austria and now lives in Edinburgh where she splits her time between working at Scottish PEN and the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (home of the Dangerous Women Project). 

She has produced and written short films, performed at the International Storytelling Festival, and dabbled in music production. Her short fiction has been published in Gutter and 404 Ink, and her non-fiction can be found on CommonSpace. Her novella Amphibian was shortlisted for the 2016 Novella Award. She is currently writing her first novel.

Her advice to new writers: “Do the thing, be proactive, practice being patient.”

DANIEL SHAND is a writer based in Edinburgh. Born in Kirkcaldy in 1989, he has lived in Edinburgh since 2011, where he is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh and a Scottish literature tutor.

His shorter work has been published in a number of magazines and he has performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  He won the 2012 University of Edinburgh Sloan Prize for fiction and the University of Dundee Creative Writing Award.  

His debut novel Fallow was published by Sandstone Press in 2016. Find out more about the novel and purchase a copy here. You can find out more about Mr Shandhere.

His advice to new writers: “Figure out why you like the things you like, then figure out how your work can operate in the same way.”

RYAN VAN WINKLE is a poet, live artist, podcaster and critic living in Edinburgh. His second collection, The Good Dark, won the Saltire Society’s 2015 Poetry Book of the Year award.

As a member of Highlight Arts he has organized festivals and translation workshops in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship in 2012 and a residency at The Studios of Key West in 2016. His poems have appeared in New Writing Scotland, The Prairie Schooner and The American Poetry Review.

His advice to new writers: ‘Don’t listen to me’ or ‘Tape this poem to your bathroom mirror.’

UMBRELLAS OF EDINBURGH is a collection of poetry and prose edited by Russell Jones and Claire Askew and was named one of the best Scottish poetry books of 2016! The collection is inspired by locations across Edinburgh and showcases some of the best contemporary writers in a city known for great writers. 

Russell Jones will join us to talk about editing and bringing this collection together, and to share a few of his favourite poems from it. You can find out more about Mr Jones here.