Greenock to host the inaugural Beacon Book Festival

Beacon Book Festival highlights include:

Over three days, from Friday 20 – Sunday 22 February, Inverclyde will welcome some of the UK’s finest literary talent for discussions and events at the Beacon Arts Centre.

To assist in making the arts accessible to all, some of the events will be on a pay-what-you-can basis.

The brainchild of Co-director Lesley Davidson, she has long wanted to curate a book festival at the Beacon Arts Centre and is hoping that it will become a firm fixture in Scotland’s rich cultural calendar.

She said: “It’s great to have the opportunity to bring some of Scotland’s finest writers to our stunning waterfront venue. The inaugural Beacon Book Festival is diverse and inspiring, and we are confident that we have something to suit all ages, including two events from local authors, Anne Pettigrew and Ken MacLeod. I want to thank our supporters, the Scottish Book Trust, Waterstones (Sauchiehall Street and Braehead), Inverclyde Council, Inverclyde Libraries, Business Gateway and Ardgowan Hospice for coming on board with the festival.”

Alex Reedijk, Chair of Beacon Arts Centre, said: “We are looking forward to welcoming people to the first ever Beacon Book Festival. As the great writer, Margaret Atwood, said, ‘a word after a word after a word is power’ and I cannot wait to attend some of the events.”

The Festival kicks off with a school’s programme on Friday 20 February. Writers include: the Kelpies Prize winner, Lindsay Littleson, with an event for children ages 5+, followed by a Gaelic schools session for children aged 8+ with Outlander star, Gillebrìde Mac ‘IlleMhaoil. The award-winning writer Ely Percy concludes the school’s programme for ages 16+ around their coming-of-age novel, set in the mid-noughties in Renfrew and Paisley – Duck Feet.

Other Festival highlights include: Del Amitri’s frontman Justin Currie (chaired by Paul English), who will discuss his memoir of music and living with Parkinson’s. Host of The Big Scottish Book Club, Damian Barr, discusses his new novel, The Two Roberts. Recently shortlisted for a Nero Fiction Award (2025), this intoxicating, brave and compassionate novel from the author of Maggie and Me reimagines one of the strongest and most passionate love stories of modern British art around the two Ayrshire-born artists Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, who met in the early 1930s at Glasgow School of Art.

MacMillan prize-winning author-illustrator Ross Collins leads an interactive children’s picture book session on Saturday 21 February. In the afternoon of 21 February, the Festival will host a double-bill with The Hebridean Baker and BBC Alba presenter Peter MacQueen, chaired by Beacon favourite Jane McCarry. The Saturday concludes with Scottish Women in Writing featuring Denise Mina, Louise Welsh and Kirsty Logan, chaired by BBC Scotland’s Arts Correspondent, Pauline McLean.

Sunday 22 February kicks off with the joint winner of the Herald McCash Scots Poetry Competition (2023), Raymond Burke, who discusses The Metaphoric Manual – a lively guide to figures of speech. The Beacon’s Recovery Creative Writing Group will read some of their work at 12:30pm on Sunday. Local poet Laurie Donaldson leads two interactive sessions around An Introduction to Poetry and An Introduction to Creative Writing.

Two local writers – Anne Pettigrew will discuss reading and writing for wellbeing and pleasure and Ken MacLeod will read from Beyond the Hallowed Sky, the first in his Lightspeed Trilogy.

Bestselling Crime Writer Christopher Brookmyre with discuss his novel The Cracked Mirror with Alistair Braidwood.

The Festival will draw to a close with The Bookshop Band, the offspring of an artistic love-affair between composers Ben Please and Beth Porter and a multi-award-winning independent bookshop in the UK, Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights.