‘I would recommend this programme… it is incredibly supportive and interesting with a varied curriculum, interesting recommended reading, and full of great networking opportunities’ – Participating Mentee, 2016/17 Following the success of the first Emerging Critics programme, we are back! This...

Earlier this month, Kapka Kassabova won the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award for Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe. Kapka Kassabova is a poet of itinerancy and transience. Her prose and verse inhabit the physical and imaginary edge-lands of our lives. She was born in 1973 in Communist...

Scottish Review of Books in conversation with a bookseller—Duncan Furness, Topping & Company, St Andrews

Kapka Kassabova has won the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year for her latest book, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe. Scotland-based writer Kapka Kassabova last night lifted the prestigious Stanford Dolman Award for the Travel Book of the Year. Her book, Border: A Journey to the Edge of...

From the wider world of literary podcasts: Listen to author Alan Taylor and critic Philip Hensher as they talk about Spark’s life, legacy, special strengths as a novelist – and the mystique that continues to surround the Scottish-born, Tuscan dwelling author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. ...

Muriel Spark’s centenary was marked in fine Edinburgh style at the Usher Hall last night. Close to 2000 people crammed into the theatre with only a handful of restricted view seats left unfilled. All had come in expectation of  a celebration of Muriel Spark’s life and work but with advertising...

IN THE winter of 1918, Scotland was dismal. The First World War was almost but not yet over, and the country reeling from grief. Never the cheeriest place on the planet, Edinburgh was more sombre and inward-looking than ever. Into this atmosphere, on February 1, in a tenement in Bruntsfield, Muriel...

Live on the BBC today and heralding the Centenary on Thursday (1 Feb 2018) — an entertaining and enlightening article by our own editor Alan Taylor, author of the best-selling book  An Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark on 10 Things You May Not Know About Muriel Spark . You can...

To mark Burns Night, Professor Willy Maley of Glasgow University has written a piece on Muriel Spark for Scottish Book Trust: Muriel Spark Burns Bright on Burns Night. ‘The great men of Scottish literature have had their suppers, their statues, and their scholarly societies. Only now are we beginning...

Readers of The Scottish Review of Books might be interested to know of an Edinburgh Readers’ Group focussing on the writing of Muriel Spark. Throughout this, her centenary year, Waterstones in Edinburgh West End are hosting The Spark Challenge Book Group. Every month they are meeting to discuss...