Meet the authors bound for Bookends
Traditional storyteller Jess Smith headlines Bookends Festival next month telling tales of travellers’ lives in Scotland.
The author of Jessie’s Journey, Tears for a Tinker and Tales from the Tent, to name just a few of her books, will be at Benderloch’s Victory Hall on Sunday September 23 at 7pm. The free event is being sponsored by the Scottish Book Trust.
A self-proclaimed gatherer of tales since she was wee, Jess grew up as part of a travelling family, living with seven sisters and a shaggy dog in an old blue bus - her granny was born in Luing.
Ask her where she belongs and she will say ‘wherever the feather falls or the seed is blown’, Jess is the proud inheritor of a long gypsy tradition telling stories and singing songs.
‘Oban and surrounding areas are very special to me – my mother’s brother and his family lived in Oban. When we lived on the road in our bus home of many summers, it was always our first stop after leaving school in April. We camped at Ganavan Sands and spent a few weeks laughing and cracking around our campfire before moving on to the berry picking in Blair,’ she told The Oban Times.
And added: ‘In my writings I have simply taken a step back to those days of freedom and wanderings from ancient camping grounds to other old places.
‘From within this bubble of history I gathered a wealth of tales and when I sit in schools with children, it gives me the greatest pleasure to hand over those stories and a song or two, to another generation so that they live on and never die. Oban holds my heart.’
Jess, who wrote Sookin’ Berries, a collection of stories for younger readers, will also be visiting Lochnell Primary and Nursery School on Monday September 24 to share some of those children’s tales.
New Scottish writer Kellan MacInnes is another author coming to Bookends. He will be reading from his first novel The Making of Mickey Bell, which he describes as a real feel good story about Scotland, the Munros and a dog. Tickets for his event on Saturday September 22, at 7pm, are £8.
Bookends founder Joy Cameron said: ‘Questions and answers at this session are bound to be filled with reflection on how Mickey Bell relates to keen hillwalker Kellan’s own health struggles and how mountains have become healers in both their lives.’
Diagnosed with AIDSrelated cancer in the late 1990s and given just six months to live, Kellan did what HIV positive people did back then; packed in his job in social work, cashed in his pension, went home and waited to die. Only he didn’t. He is still climbing mountains as he has since he was a teenager, is working again, and in 2012 received a grant from Creative Scotland to fulfil his ambition to become a writer.
He will be visiting the English department at Oban High School on Monday September 24 to talk about his writing and living with adversity.
Other events coming up at Bookends include a sing-andread session with Bookbug on Tuesday September 26 at 11am. This is a free session suitable for toddlers, nursery age youngsters, parents and their carers, and is sponsored by Argyll and Bute Council.
The complex process of bookbinding will be revealed at a hands-on session with Fiona Anderson on Thursday September 28 at 7pm. There are 10 spaces available at the workshop, giving people the chance to try out the art of gold tooling, lettering or decorating the spine and covers of a book with gold leaf. Booking is advised. Tickets are £6.
To get a taste of what else is to come at the two-week festival, Bookends is hosting a pop-up session at the Reading Room in the Victory Hall on Monday August 27 from 11am to 6.30pm.