Glasgow's annual book festival, Aye Write!, is to be expanded into a series of events throughout the year.

The event's new programmer, Stuart Kelly, a writer, journalist and critic who is one of this year's Booker Prize judges, wants to build on the strengths of the festival, based at the city's Mitchell Library every April.

Mr Kelly said the festival, for which The Herald is media partner, can be involved in literary events across the calendar.

He pointed to landmark dates next year that might inspire events such as the independence referendum, and the anniversaries of the outbreak of World War One and the Battle of Bannockburn.

"I am convinced there is a bigger audience out there for this festival," Mr Kelly said.

"Part of my job is to look at a round-the-year strand, and also to look at not only attracting a bigger audience but a different audience.

"It is not just about bums on seats - we are doing well with that -- but looking out there and seeing who we can offer something different to."

Next year's festival will also have an advisory panel of programmers including The Herald's literary editor, Rosemary Goring, writer Chris Dolan, and Professor Willy Maley of Glasgow University.

Mr Kelly said leading poetry contest the TS Eliot Prize will be held in Glasgow this September, with Aye Write! events attached, and a strong Aye Write presence is planned during the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Mr Kelly said: "Aye Write! has the intellectual credentials and the literary chops, and that is down to Andrew Kelly [the last programmer] and we are absolutely building on the work he did, but it is time to stretch throughout the year."

Karen Cunningham, the director of the festival and head of Glasgow Libraries, said: "It's very much about trying to extend the brand as a quality mark of literary events. For example one of Stuart's first jobs will be with the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival [in October] which will have a two or three-day literary strand."

A recent report found Aye Write! was the third biggest book festival in the UK, behind Edinburgh's and the Hay-on-Wye's.

Mr Kelly said: "It is a fascinating way to begin with the mental health arts festival.

"And with 2014, there are immediatly so many strands, with the Commonwealth Games, the Referendum, the anniversary of the World War One, the anniversary of Bannockburn, the publication of Waverley [by Sir Walter Scott in 1814].

"I am keen to pair fiction and non-fiction events together - so if someone has done a book, for example, about medical advances in the Great War, to have that with a novelistic account of it would be lovely."

Ms Cunningham said she hoped he would look at slightly more "off-the-wall" ideas and attract a new generation of readers and writers, but retain the core audience of the festival.

"Our audience loves what we do, we are quite comfortable with what we do, but it is about growing our audience for the future." she said.

Mr Kelly is the author of The Book Of Lost Books: An Incomplete Guide To All The Books You'll Never Read, and Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented A Nation, which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Non-fiction Prize and was Radio 4's Book Of The Week.

He was guest selector at the 2010 Edinburgh International Book Festival, curating a strand on fiction and the avant-garde.

He is reader-in-residence for the MA in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University and a Board Member for the Society of Scottish Studies in Europe.

He lives in the Scottish Borders and is currently writing a book on religion.