Author: Katie Halsey
A Short Poem Inspired by the Leighton Library’s Water Drinkers
This week, we are happy to present another work in our Highly Commended series, which features creative work inspired by the Books and Borrowing materials. Gillian Mellor’s poem, ‘Extracts from the Leighton Library’, was inspired by the Water Drinker’s Register from the Leighton Library in Dunblane. Our judging panel enjoyed Gillian’s poem, which evokes the […]
More New Creative Work Inspired by Books and Borrowing Materials
This week, we are happy to present Moira McPartlin’s story ‘The Missionary’. Moira’s story uses names from our Borrowers’ Registers. Moira has been writing for over twenty-five years. Her debut novel The Incomers, published by Fledgling Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. Over the next seven […]
More Creative Work Inspired by the Books and Borrowing Project
This week, we’re happy to present the second of our Highly Commended Creative Writing Competition entries – i.e. works inspired by Books and Borrowing project materials. This week it is a short story, written by Virginia Crow. Virginia is an award-winning historical fiction author who grew up in Orkney, and now lives in rural Caithness. […]
Introducing Exciting New Creative Work Inspired by Material From the Books and Borrowing Project
In this week’s blog, we are happy to introduce the first of a new series of posts, which will introduce our readers to some of the Highly Commended entries in our Creative Writing competition. We enjoyed reading the entries for this competition so much that we have decided to share more of them than originally […]
Books, Books, More Books (and some Borrowers)! Two Library Excursions at the Books and Borrowing Conference
Today is the last day to register for the Books and Borrowing conference in April – don’t miss out, and make sure to sign up now at Reading and Book Circulation, 1650-1850 | University of Stirling Online Shop. We are excited to announce that there will be two excursions during the Books and Borrowing conference, […]
Announcement: Books and Borrowing Creative Writing Competition: Second Prize!
We are delighted to congratulate Jenny Mitchell, whose short story ‘Byron Jumps Slave Trader in Stromness’ was awarded the second prize in our Books and Borrowing Creative Writing competition. Jenny was inspired by the records of the Orkney Library, held in the Orkney Library & Archive in Kirkwall. Jenny is in her late sixties. At […]
Announcement: Books and Borrowing Creative Writing Competition Winner!
We are delighted to announce that the Winner of our Creative Writing competition is Helen Hutchinson, whose short story ‘Taking Flight – A Victorian Tale’ was inspired by the Borrowers’ Register from Innerpeffray Library pictured above. Our judge, Daisy Hay, on awarding Helen the prize, commented: This is a beautifully evoked and moving story that […]
Our Conference Programme: 17-18 April 2023, University of Stirling
We are very excited this week to release the programme for the forthcoming Books and Borrowing conference, held as part of the Libraries, Lives and Legacies Research Festival, at the University of Stirling on 17th and 18th April of this year. Register here Reading and Book Circulation, 1650-1850 | University of Stirling Online Shop If […]
News and Updates
The Books and Borrowing team have been very busy this week! In between our usual tasks of data entry, data normalisation, research, teaching and administration, we have been doing the preliminary judging round for our Creative Writing conference. The next stage in the competition is for our celebrity judge, Daisy Hay, to make her decision, […]
Homecoming, Return and Recovery: The BSECS conference, 2023
Happy New Year! Can it really be 2023 already? The New Year got off to a good start for two members of the ‘Books and Borrowing’ team – Josh and I had a great time attending the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Conference, held at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, from 4-6 January. Appropriately, given […]