Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and historian Sir Tom Devine will top the bill at the tenth Cove and Kilcreggan Book Festival.
Last year’s event at Cove Burgh Hall was hailed as the best ever, and a wide range of speakers has once again been lined up for this November.
Nicola Sturgeon, who was First Minister from 2014 until March this year, has listed some of the books which most affected her as Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
She is scheduled to open the event, which will be on Saturday and Sunday, November 24 and 25.
Other speakers include the distinguished historian Sir Tom Devine and the former Chelsea and Scotland footballer Pat Nevin, whose autobiography is titled The Accidental Footballer: A Memoir.
Broadcaster Sally Magnusson will be returning to Cove – her new novel Music In The Dark was published earlier this year – as will multiple Booker Prize nominee Andrew O’Hagan.
Aberdonian Kerry Hudson’s latest book and memoir, Lowborn, takes her back to the towns of her childhood as she investigates her own past and what it means to be poor in Britain today. It was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Guardian and Independent Book of the Year.
Orwell prize-winning author, BAFTA-nominated broadcaster and hip-hop artist Darren McGarvey will discuss his recent book, The Social Distance Between Us, while poet and playwright Hannah Lavery, currently Edinburgh’s makar, will also make her debut.
Weekend passes which cover admission for all the talks will go on sale at the end of this month via the hall’s website.
All profits from the event go towards the hall, which has been run by the community after being closed down by Argyll and Bute Council 23 years ago.
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