THE first Birnam Book Festival is to be staged between 23 and 25 November.

Broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove, whose book Memphis 68 was awarded the 2018 Penderyn Music Book of the Year, and Darren McGarvey, winner of the Orwell Award for his book Poverty Safari, are amongst those taking to the stage, as well as author and Dr Who scriptwriter, Jenny Colgan, and crime author Lin Anderson.

Peggy Seeger, the folk singer, will take part in an event on the Saturday.

Fiona Ritchie will talk to Ms Seeger about her memoir First Time Ever, named after the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

"Not only are we delighted to welcome Peggy to Birnam," says Ms Ritchie, “but it is particularly apt that she’s here to talk about her book at our first ever Birnam Book Festival. And I’m looking forward to joining her back on stage on Saturday evening for more words and music in the company of none other than Alan Reid, well-known as a member of Battlefield Band for many years."

Drew Campbell, deputy manager of Birnam Arts said: "This beautiful corner of Perthshire already features strongly in literary history, inspiring writers from William Shakespeare and John Ruskin to Beatrix Potter. We invite you to come and celebrate this rich heritage with us at a feast of a Book Festival."

Frazer Williams, owner of The Birnam Reader bookshop, has been instrumental in bringing together the line-up of authors. “There’ll be something for everyone over the course of the weekend,” he explains. “We have contemporary fiction, poetry, philosophy, social commentary, biography and history, as well as neuroscience, and crime and forensics.

"We’ve also included creative writing workshops and sessions with children’s authors, plus a link-up with the Corbenic Community’s Advent Fair which runs this weekend too.”

www.birnamarts.com

THE Scottish author Claire Askew is to embark on a tour of Scottish educational institutions as part of Book Week Scotland.

She will appear in six colleges across east and central Scotland over five days, and members of the public are also welcomed at a number of the events.

The events with the Scottish Book Trust will visit Newbattle Abbey College, Perth College, Fife College, West Lothian College, Edinburgh College and Forth Valley College.

Ms Askew is a poet, novelist and the current Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Her debut novel, All the Hidden Truths, was the winner of the 2016 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, and longlisted for the 2014 Peggy Chapman-Andrews (Bridport) Novel Award. Claire holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh and has won awards for her work, including the Jessie Kesson Fellowship and a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.

Her debut poetry collection, This Changes Things, was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and a Saltire First Book Award.

In 2016 Claire was selected as a Scottish Book Trust Reading Champion, and she works as the Scotland tutor for women's writing initiatives Write Like A Grrrl! and #GrrrlCon.

She said: “I'm absolutely thrilled to be going on a tour of some of Scotland's FE colleges this Book Week Scotland.

"I worked as a further education lecturer for five years, and know what vibrant, essential places our colleges are.

"Books can take us to all sorts of places - they can provide an escape into magical worlds, they can make us smile and lift our mood, or help us think differently about the world."

www.scottishbooktrust.com

THE Edinburgh Greek Film Festival opens on 30 November at Edinburgh Filmhouse, with '1968' by Tassos Boulmetis, a film about set around the basketball team AEK Athens.

This year’s programme includes an "entertainingly daft film" about making, and failing to make, a film, Too Much Info Clouding Over My Head, and a children’s film – The Flea by Dimitris Spyrou.

The festival also features Pantelis Voulgaris’s The Last Note, about the end of the German Occupation in Greece.

www.edinburghgreekfestival.com