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Scotlandsfest 2019: Keeping indigenous languages alive

  • Quaker Meeting House 7 Victoria Street Edinburgh United Kingdom (map)

Part of ScotlandsFest 2019, a week-long festival of stimulating conversation, readings and debate in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For more information and the full programme, please visit www.luath.co.uk/scotlandsfest-2019.

To mark the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages, Alison Lang, Director of the Gaelic Books Council and author of Am Balach Beag a dh'Èisteadh aig Dorsan and Alan Riach, professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow and co-author of Arts and the Nation, celebrate creative approaches to strengthening the indigenious languages of Scotland in the future.

ALISON LANG started writing articles for bilingual magazine Cothrom and television reviews for The Scotsman before branching out into fiction. Her latest novel Am Balach Beag a dh'Èisteadh aig Dorsan (The Little Boy Who Listened at Doors) won the An Comunn Gaidhealach's Adult Book of the Year at the 2018 Royal National Mod, and she became the Director of the Gaelic Books Council in January 2019. 

ALAN RIACH, poet and professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University, is the author of the highly-acclaimed English language translations of the great 18th century Gaelic poems, 'Praise of Ben Dorian' and 'The Birlinn of Clanranald', and a Scots language version of the opening scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

Tickets are £5/£3 conc and are available from the Scotlandsfest event page here.