A Stirling Opportunity

Do you think there are already enough crime-fiction festivals? Well, don’t expect to convince these two Scottish scribblers of that:

An idea dreamed up between two of the country’s best known crime writers over a bottle of Prosecco moved a step closer to reality yesterday with the announcement of Scotland’s first international crime writing festival.

The Bloody Scotland festival, to be held in Stirling next September, will feature authors in the genre from overseas along with some of Scotland’s finest crime writers.

At the event’s launch in Stirling’s Smith Art Gallery and Museum yesterday, Lin Anderson and Alex Gray, the writers behind the idea, outlined their plans to build a crime writing festival to match, if not surpass, anything south of the Border--where they already exist at Bristol, Reading and (the biggest of them all) Harrogate.

Plans are already afoot to bring top-flight international guests to join Scottish crime writers Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Val McDermid, Stuart McBride, and Louise Welsh on a programme that will be announced in the spring.

As the Edinburgh-based Scotsman newspaper notes, 2012 would be an excellent time to begin such an annual event:

Next year is also auspiciously full of anniversaries that could be linked to events at the inaugural Bloody Scotland festival, which will take place from 14-16 September. It is 125 years since the publication of the first Sherlock Holmes’ story, 35 years since William McIlvanney’s hugely influential novel Laidlaw--and 25 years since the first publication of Ian Rankin’s own Rebus novels.

More information about Bloody Scotland is available here.