BIG LIT is now in its 8th year. Audiences are growing, more local venues are getting involved and last year’s monitoring forms expressed almost universal approval. This year we celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage and the centenary of the end of WW1with the feisty antics of the real life suffragettes who inspired Ajay Close’s novel ‘A Petrol Scented Spring’ and some unexpected war verse from Robert W Service. We have music and song, both popular and classical, Edinburgh Fringe First winning theatre and a writer who has been off entertaining troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in a tutu! Another Bill Barlow interactive installation should spark the literary imagination. There is something for everyone in our young person’s strand spearheaded by children’s writer Chrissie Gittins who will entertain children from three Primary Schools accompanied by a bossy beetroot, a dive-bombing lark, a very cute newt and a jar full of stars. Whether it be Bards for Breakfast, ukuleles, launches, a magical interactive trail, a guided walk, croissants, politics, poetry and prose, the heady letters of Samuel Rutherford, soup, scones, popup books stalls, guerrilla poetry or a trip on a random tandem you are bound to find something to tickle your literary fancy.  Thanks to the support and generosity of the Holywood Trust, The Scottish Book Trust, The Gatehouse Development Initiative, our sponsors, other project funders and our trusty band of volunteer helpers we are once again able to bring some of the finest talent, both local and national, to Gatehouse. Have a wonderful time.

See the full programme on the Big Lit website:

www.biglit.org