With over ten years’ experience, Gemma Creffield is the Editorial Director of Solstice, Simon & Schuster UK’s brand new SFF imprint. She works with internationally bestselling authors such as Nikita Gill (Hekate) and Stacey McEwan (A Forbidden Alchemy), publishing the very best in SFF, horror and romantasy.

This talk will be livestreamed via Zoom.

How do writers and agents collaborate to bring a book to its readers? On this panel, our Festival Director Ann will be in conversation with agent Robbie Guillory and authors Katalina Watt and Heather Palmer to discover their journey from manuscript to a published book.

Heather Palmer is a Scottish writer with a passion for exploring nature and the stories of the long-dead or undying. She loves writing queer characters, unpicking the status quo and making people laugh. In 2019, she won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers’ Award – the first writer ever to win with a comics script – and the opening chapters of her first novel were shortlisted for The Book Edit’s Writer’s Award. Her debut novel Deathbound was released as an Audible Original in January 2025. 

Katalina Watt is the author of Saltswept, out in Spring 2026 with Hodderscape. They were selected for a 2025 Literature Matters Award from Royal Society of Literature, and AIR Literature UNESCO 2024 Writer in Residence for Konstkollektivet in Sweden. They were a finalist for 2023 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine as founding Audio Director for khōréō.

Robbie Guillory spent nearly a decade working in publishing before becoming an agent.  He represents a wide range of genres, from literary thrillers to historical romance.

This panel will be livestreamed via Zoom.

Authors spend a lot of time alone focused on their writing, but there are organizations that are there to support them. In this session representatives from Creative Scotland, the Scottish Book Trust and Society of Authors will share how writers can use and access their services.

This panel will be livestreamed via Zoom.

Kirsten Lang joined Zeno in the summer 2024 after time working at a previous literary agency, and before that working as a bookseller in the Charing Cross branch of Foyles. She is always interested in a Ghibli-esque tale and is a big fan of horror, especially workplace horror. She’s always on the lookout for Scottish voices, especially those from her home in the North East of Scotland.

Kirsten Lang’s one-to-ones will be held digitally via Zoom.

Robbie Guillory spent nearly a decade working in publishing before becoming an agent.  He represents a wide range of genres, from literary thrillers to historical romance.

Robbie Guillory’s one-to-ones will be held in-person.

SOLD OUT! Lina Langlee is from Sweden but moved to Scotland to study for her undergraduate and Masters. After then working in publishing for a number of years, she realised that being a literary agent combined all her favourite bits of the book industry and made the switch. She was shortlisted for the RNA ‘Agent of the Year’ award in 2019 and 2020. She now works with The North Literary Agency. Find out more about Lina Langlee and The North Literary Agency.

Writing is a lonely business?! Not for our panel, who have embraced co-creation with others. Come along to find out how it works.

Dave Cook is a multi award-winning author of comics and video game history books from Edinburgh. He’s the creator of the hit ongoing cyberpunk series Killtopia (Titan Comics) contributor to the Boom! Studios horror anthology series, Hello Darkness.

Lindz McLeod is a queer Scottish writer whose short work has been published by Apex, Catapult, DIVA, Nightmare, and many more. Her longer work includes the award-winning short story collection TURDUCKEN, her books SUNBATHERS, QUEEN O'NINE TAILS, and THE UNLIKELY PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET, as well as the forthcoming WE THE DROWNING, THE MISEDUCATION OF CAROLINE BINGLEY and the collaborative anthology AN HONOUR AND A PRIVILEGE. Her work has been taught in schools and universities, turned into avant-garde opera, and optioned for television. She is currently in her final year of a PhD in Creative Writing.

MK Hardy is the pen name for two geeky women living and writing together in Scotland. Their debut Sapphic Historical Gothic novel, The Needfire, released in the UK in July 2025 from Solaris. They were mentees in the Pitch Wars 2020-21 programme, and mentors for Queery Fest 2022. They are represented by John Baker at Bell Lomax Moreton.

This panel will be livestreamed via Zoom.

Can we use a prescription as a base for a sci/fi-fantasy-horror story? What about a receipt? A parking ticket? A nursery rhyme? How many 'other,' forms of writing could we harness to enrich our writing practice? From the back of shampoo bottles, your dishwasher instructions, children's picture books to semaphore - let's go weird. 

Hannah Kelly is a fantasy writer and illustrator. In 2019 she won the Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Prize for her speculative fiction and she is currently writing her YA Fantasy series for Victoria Hobbs at A.M.Heath. Arthur Rackham, Brian Froud and Alan Lee are her constant inspiration for worldbuilding.

This workshop is in-person only.

Getting as far as thinking about an edit is a huge achievement. But what is an edit? You may hear words like Developmental, Structural, Copyediting, Line editing, Proofreading … are they all the same thing, with varying degrees of scary-sounding names? And do you need to work with an editor to do all, some or any of them? If so, how does that work? 

Workshop leader Helen Bleck will introduce the different types of editing, and you’ll look at some (invented!) examples to assess what kind of work they might benefit from. You’ll have the chance to experiment with developmental and line editing yourself, and discuss your thoughts. The workshop rounds off with a look at how you can work with an editor to help make your work (even) better.  

Editing is a hugely rewarding part of the writing process, and your editor is there only to help you – come along to find out how!

Helen Bleck has worked within the publishing industry since the early 1990s (starting out as an editorial assistant, working through the ranks to her final in-house role as managing editor at Edinburgh publisher Canongate). Now freelance, she edits fiction (with a preference for Fantasy) and narrative non-fiction, working both for indie authors and for publishers. She has also worked as digital resource creator for museums, and delighted in doing the MLitt in Fantasy Literature at Glasgow (2015–17). Through Creative Edinburgh, she also mentors writers at the start of their career.

This workshop is online only. To access the workshop at the conference venue, please bring your own device and headphones. Seating will be available in the Islay room.

Festival Director Ann will be chatting to C. L. McCartney and Trip Galey from indie publisher Bona Books about their journey from reader and writer to setting up a publishing house.

Bona Books was founded in London by three book-obsessed friends to produce high-quality, subversive, and unapologetically queer books in the science-fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. ‘Bona’ means ‘good’ in Polari, (a cant language used by queer people for decades) and we’re all about the good stuff…bona people, bona art, Bona Books.

This talk will be online only, via Zoom.

How do publishers cut through the noise of hundreds of books being published every week?

Amy Portsmouth, Senior Marketing Executive at Angry Robot, will be sharing her experience of working in marketing and publicity.