A small town in Dumfries and Galloway will once again be the centre of Scotland's literary scene for a week this September.
The programme for the 2016 Wigtown Book Festival includes 236 authors in 281 events in what is officially Scotland's national book town.
The theme for this year's festival is island life, and its events explore relationships between distant communities, and how island life effects people living in cities.
Writers, politicians and other figures appearing at the festival include Michel Faber, Debi Gliori, Kenny MacAskill, Aasmah Mir, Malcolm Rifkind, Susan Calman and Prue Leith, among others, with a guest director, Hardeep Singh Kohli.
The festival, for whom The Herald is media partner, runs from September 23 to October 2, has a team of more than 100 community volunteers based in the town.
Adrian Turpin, artistic director, said: "At its best, a festival is a kind of island of the mind, with its own proud, local identity but open to exciting exchanges with the rest of the world.
"At the 2016 Wigtown Book Festival we are setting sail for the Hebrides, searching for Utopia and considering the nation’s relationship with Europe.
“But, as ever, we are also especially keen to reflect many of the things that make this part of the world feel so special, from its bookshops and writers, to landscape, food and people, including our team of community volunteers who offer such a warm welcome to visitors."
The explorer Jason Lewis will lead a canoeing expedition to an island in the Solway and there will be a stargazing trip in a neolithic stone circle under some of the darkest skies in Europe.
For the first time, the festival will also offer a dedicated campsite, supported by EventScotland.
Guest director Hardeep Singh Kohli will create a "pop-up dining experience."
He will also compere the popular Wigtown’s Got Talent, in which locals, visitors and authors compete on stage.
New events making use of the festival's surroundings include Location, Location, Location which offers visitors the chance to visit local properties for sale.
Street Wisdom invites participants to use a walk through Wigtown to "answer important life questions."
This year the festival, which has been going since 1999m has a pop-up cinema.
This will include a 12-hour run of filmed versions of Macbeth.
It will also host a special screening and discussion of Gina Bellamacina’s documentary The Safe House.
Charting the fortunes of Britain’s public libraries from their Scottish origins to the present day, it features interviews with Stephen Fry and John Cooper Clarke among others.
Aspiring writers will have a chance to pitch work to leading literary agency Conville & Walsh and a festival creative writing course is provided by authors Robert Twigger and Jason Webster of The Bridport Writing School.
Kate Timney is the Spring Fling Artist in Residence for the Festival.
Skye Loneragan is the 2016 Wigtown Book Festival writer-in-residence.
Loneragan is a playwright, performance poet and artistic director of Toonspeak Young People’s theatre.
During the Festival she will be developing a new piece, Though This Be Madness, which asks how we might diagnose Shakespeare’s characters today.
The festival has an education programme that reaches more than 2,000 young people in Dumfries & Galloway and also provides free tickets to under 25’s across the festival programme.
For the fourth year running, a prison outreach programme will bring more than 10 events and workshops to residents of HMP Dumfries.
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