May
30
2:00 PM14:00
May
30
7:30 PM19:30
Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms
Join us for this amateur production of Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms, adapted for stage by Stephen Briggs.
Scarcely a year on from the events of Guards! Guards!, the Ankh-Morpork City Night Watch find their services are once more needed to tackle a threat to their city. A threat at least as deadly as a 60-foot dragon, but mechanical and heartless to boot. It kills without compunction. It is the first gun on the Discworld.
The original Watch - Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, Corporal Carrot and Corporal Nobbs - are joined by some new recruits, selected to reflect the city's ethnic make-up - Lance-Constable Cuddy (a dwarf), Detritus (a troll) and Angua (a w..., well, best to find out for yourself)..
Brought to the stage by Edinburgh-based company Strawmoddie Theatre
Venue: Theatre
Running Time: approx 2 hours 30 minutes including interval
Performance dates and times
Thursday 30th May: 7:30pm
Friday 31st Maty: 8:30pm
Saturday 1st June: 8:30pm
Sunday 2nd June: 5pm
Please note that the venue has unreserved seating. Please arrive in good time to secure seats.
The venue has limited wheelchair spaces. Please let us know when booking if you require one. All wheelchair spaces have now been allocated for the Sunday performance.
May
31
2:00 PM14:00
Digital Workshop: Writing Fantasy Poetry
In this generative workshop on fantasy poetry, we will explore using other worlds to inspire our poetry, bring magic into the everyday and have a go at persona poetry (writing from a different character's perspective). This will be a chance to try out different ways of approaching fantasy in poetry as well as looking at some different poems to provide inspiration. All the exercises will be a jumping off point for an area of poetry that isn't always acknowledged or explored, and a fun chance to get fantastical in a relaxed setting!
This workshop is for people with any level of writing experience - whether you've written lots or whether you have never written at all! There will be a break in the workshop and the workshop will be auto-captioned.
Your Workshop Leader
Elspeth Wilson is a writer and poet who is interested in exploring the limitations and possibilities of the body through writing, as well as writing about joy and happiness from a marginalised perspective. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Too Hot to Sleep, is published by Written Off Publishing and was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s 2023 Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her debut novel, These Mortal Bodies, is forthcoming with Simon and Schuster in 2025. She can usually be found in or near the sea.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.
May
31
2:00 PM14:00
Agent One to One with Stevie Finegan
SOLD OUT
Writers will have the invaluable opportunity to talk directly to an agent from a literary agency or an editor from a SFFH publisher about their work, seek advice about any stage of the writing process, and receive direct feedback on pitches and ideas.
Meetings will be 15 minutes long, and there will be a £25 fee. For the in-person meetings, please select which Agent you’d like to speak to on booking. Please note spaces are limited.
By booking tickets for this event, you are committing to submitting your submission letter and the first 2000 words of your novel (or less) by Monday 06.05.2024
Please send your material to admin@cymerafestival.co.uk
Booking Deadline Monday 6th May 2024. Please note that our Agent One to One sessions book out very quickly.
May
31
5:00 PM17:00
Writing the Future with Rachelle Atalla, Dan Coxon and Una McCormack
For as long as humans have existed, they have asked: What if? But what is it that compels writers to imagine the future?
Writing the Future gathers some of the best contemporary writers of science fiction, speculative fiction, dystopia and eco-fiction to explain their craft and explore the many worlds upon which our imaginations might land. Authors such as Toby Litt, Nina Allan, Adam Roberts and Una McCormack reveal how to balance scientific research with creative freedom, examine the different forms the written text might evolve into, and offer practical advice on giving life to your own vision of the future.
Contributors Rachelle Atalla and Una McCormack are joined by Dan Coxon, one of the collection’s editors, to talk about the collection and their take on Writing the Future.
This event will be chaired by Erin Hardee.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
May
31
5:00 PM17:00
Gods and their Mortals with Vajra Chandrasekera and Vaishnavi Patel
Vajra Chandrasekera is a writer, mostly of speculative fiction, from Colombo, Sri Lanka. His debut novel The Saint of Bright Doors is nominated for the Hugo, Lammy, and Nebula awards, won the Crawford Award and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, and his second novel Rakesfall is out in 2024. He has published over a hundred short stories, essays, reviews, articles, and poems since 2012, in half a dozen languages and in publications from the US, UK, India, China, Pakistan, and France among others, ranging from Analog and Clarkesworld to West Branch and The Los Angeles Times. His short fiction has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and collected in prestigious anthology series including The Best Science Fiction of the Year, The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, and The Apex Book of World SF. He has worked as an editor for Strange Horizons and Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Stories, and as a judge for the Dream Foundry Writing Contest and the Salam Award.
He is online at vajra.me and probably on whatever social media still exists at the time you’re reading this.
Vaishnavi Patel is a lawyer focusing on constitutional law and civil rights. She likes to write at the intersection of Indian myth, feminism, and anti-colonialism. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Kaikeyi. Vaishnavi grew up in and around Chicago, and in her spare time, enjoys activities that are almost stereotypically Midwestern: knitting, ice skating, drinking hot chocolate, and making hotdish.
Find Vaishnavi on X and Instagram @vaishnawrites
This event will be chaired by Vida Cruz.
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £5 digital ticket.
May
31
6:30 PM18:30
War/Peace with Edward Ashton and Premee Mohamed
Edward Ashton is the author of the novels Mal Goes to War (available April, 2024), Antimatter Blues, Mickey7 (now a motion picture directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Robert Pattinson), Three Days in April and The End of Ordinary. His short fiction has appeared in venues ranging from the newsletter of an Italian sausage company to Escape Pod, Analog, and Fireside Fiction. He lives in upstate New York in a cabin in the woods (not that Cabin in the Woods) with his wife, a nine pound killing machine named Maggie, and the world’s only purebred ratrantula, where he writes—mostly fiction, occasionally fact—under the watchful eyes of a giant woodpecker and a rotating cast of barred owls. In his free time, he enjoys cancer research, teaching quantum physics to sullen graduate students, and whittling.
Find Edward on X and Instagram @@edashtonwriting
Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. Currently, she is the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence and an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod. She is the author of the ‘Beneath the Rising’ series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.
This event will be chaired by Cat Hellisen.
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £6 digital ticket.
May
31
6:45 PM18:45
For Want of a Hero with Snorri Kristjánsson, Taran Matharu and Elizabeth May
Who doesn’t love a hero!? Some take the role better than others though. Dragon riders, undead Romans and sorcerer rebels - meet three different kinds of heroes with authors Snorri Kristjánsson, Taran Matharu and Elizabeth May.
A teacher, a stand-up comic, former cement packing factory worker and graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Snorri Kristjánsson also writes things. Sometimes they are books (mainly about Vikings), sometimes they are films (mainly not about Vikings) or silly stage plays (you probably don’t want to know, to be honest).
He now spends his days working with words, eating cakes and teaching Drama.
Taran Matharu is the New York Times bestselling author of the Summoner series, which has been translated into 15 languages and has sold over a million copies in English. He was born in London in 1990. Taran began to write the Summoner series in November 2013 at the age of 22, taking part in “Nanowrimo 2013” and sharing his work on Wattpad.com. The shared sample of the story went viral, reaching over 3 million reads in less than six months. In addition to Dragon Rider, he is also the author of the Contender series, out now.
Find Taran on X at @taranmatharu1, on Instagram at @@taranmatharu1 and on his Facebook Page
Elizabeth May is a Sunday Times bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy novels, including Seven Devils, Seven Mercies, and the Falconer Trilogy, and historical romances under the pen name Katrina Kendrick. She writes about monsters and monster slayers, empire destroyers and rebellions, assassins and spies. Sometimes they live in palaces, and sometimes they live in the stars, and some of them fall in love.
This event will be chaired by Katya Bacica.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
May
31
8:00 PM20:00
The Secret to a Successful Partnership with Megan Bannen and Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
There’s no I in teamwork!
Join authors Megan Bannen and Gabby Hutchinson Crouch to find out their ingredients for a successful (ish) partnership.
Megan Bannen is a former public librarian and an award-winning author of speculative fiction. Her work has been selected for the RUSA Reading List, the Indies Introduce list, and the Kids’ Indie Next List, along with numerous best-of-the-year compilations. While most of her professional career has been spent behind a reference desk, she has also sold luggage, written grants, collected a few graduate degrees from various Kansas universities, and taught English at home and abroad. She lives in the Kansas City area with her family and more pets than is reasonable.
Find Megan on X and Instagram @meganbannen
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch (Horrible Histories, Newzoids, The News Quiz, The Now Show) has a background in satire, and with the global political climate as it is, believes that now is an important time to explore themes of authoritarianism and intolerance in comedy and fiction. Born in Pontypool in Wales, and raised in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, Gabby moved to Canterbury at 18 to study at the University of Kent and ended up staying and having a family there. Her novel Cursed Under London is the start of her new Elizabethan romantasy series.
Visit Gabby’s X @Scriblit
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £6 digital ticket.
May
31
8:30 PM20:30
Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms
Join us for this amateur production of Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms, adapted for stage by Stephen Briggs.
Scarcely a year on from the events of Guards! Guards!, the Ankh-Morpork City Night Watch find their services are once more needed to tackle a threat to their city. A threat at least as deadly as a 60-foot dragon, but mechanical and heartless to boot. It kills without compunction. It is the first gun on the Discworld.
The original Watch - Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, Corporal Carrot and Corporal Nobbs - are joined by some new recruits, selected to reflect the city's ethnic make-up - Lance-Constable Cuddy (a dwarf), Detritus (a troll) and Angua (a w..., well, best to find out for yourself)..
Brought to the stage by Edinburgh-based company Strawmoddie Theatre
Venue: Theatre
Running Time: approx 2 hours 30 minutes including interval
Performance dates and times
Thursday 30th May: 7:30pm
Friday 31st Maty: 8:30pm
Saturday 1st June: 8:30pm
Sunday 2nd June: 5pm
Please note that the venue has unreserved seating. Please arrive in good time to secure seats.
The venue has limited wheelchair spaces. Please let us know when booking if you require one. All wheelchair spaces have now been allocated for the Sunday performance.
May
31
8:30 PM20:30
Jun
1
10:00 AM10:00
Agent One to One with Alice Caprio
Writers will have the invaluable opportunity to talk directly to an agent from a literary agency or an editor from a SFFH publisher about their work, seek advice about any stage of the writing process, and receive direct feedback on pitches and ideas.
Meet our Agent
Alice Capriocitybryan.com/fba-agent/alice-caprio/ from Felicity Bryan Associates
Meetings will be 15 minutes long, and there will be a £25 fee. For the in-person meetings, please select which Agent you’d like to speak to on booking. Please note spaces are limited.
By booking tickets for this event, you are committing to submitting your submission letter and the first 2000 words of your novel (or less) by Monday 06.05.2024
Please send your material to admin@cymerafestival.co.uk
Booking Deadline Monday 6th May 2024. Please note that our Agent One to One sessions book out very quickly.
Jun
1
10:00 AM10:00
From Dr. Who to Star Trek: New Stories with Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and Una McCormack
When we don’t want the story to end, we turn to novelisations and tie-in writing for our favourite series. Fresh to the scene is Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, who recent wrote the novelisation of the first adventure featuring the new (Scottish!) Doctor. Joining her is tie-in veteran Una McCormack, whose oeuvre includes works for Doctor Who, Firefly and Star Trek, including the official biographies of James T. Kirk. Jean-Luc Picard and Kathryn Janeway.
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson is the Sunday Times Bestselling author of The Order of Legends trilogy. Inaugural winner of Future Worlds Prize Award in 2020, her debut novel, The Principle of Moments, was published in January 2024 , by Gollancz. She holds a BA in English Literature and Classical Studies from the University of Exeter, where she enjoyed writing essays on Disney villains and reading Greek lyric poetry in the same day. As an author of Nigerian, Jamaican, and British-Australian heritage, her work primarily focuses on people who live at the intersection of identities, whether that’s here on Earth, or in far away galaxies of her own creation.
Dr Una McCormack is a New York Times bestselling author of TV tie-in novels based on franchises such as Star Trek and Doctor Who. She is the author of a dozen science fiction novels, including the original SF novels The Baba Yaga and Star of the Sea.
She is also the author of numerous audio dramas based on TV shows such as Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, produced by Big Finish, and performed by actors such as David Warner, Louise Jameson, Sheila Reid, John Finnemore, and others. She sold her first SF short story at the age of 19 to Doctor Who Magazine and, since then, her short fiction has been anthologised by Gardner Dozois, Farah Mendlesohn, and Ian Whates.
Follow Una on X @unamccormack and on Bluesky @unamccormack
This event will be chaired by Joe Gordon.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
10:00 AM10:00
Workshop: Break Things: Play and Experimentation in Fiction Writing with Dan Coxon
From our first encounters with creative writing in school, we're told that writing is a serious business. There are rules to be learned, techniques to be mastered, conventions to be followed. If we want to succeed, we have to put away childish things and 'take ourselves seriously' as writers. But what gets lost along the way is often what brought us to writing in the first place: a sense of enjoyment in telling a good story, and the fun of creating new characters and new worlds.
This workshop will consider what happens when we put elements of play back into our writing process, and the ways it can energise and elevate our stories. We'll look at how play is a vital element of storytelling that is too often ignored, and how breaking the rules, or subverting the conventions, often leads to a more interesting piece of writing. We'll also explore some techniques for introducing the experimental and random into our work, swapping the writer's toolbox for a toybox - and hopefully having some fun along the way.
Your Workshop Leader
Dan Coxon is an award-winning editor and writer based in London. He has been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards and the British Fantasy Awards (six times), with Writing the Uncanny (co-edited with Richard V. Hirst) winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction 2022. His anthology Being Dad won a Saboteur Award in 2016. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Shakespeare Unleashed, Beyond the Veil, Fiends in the Furrows III and Great British Horror 7: Major Arcana. His latest fiction anthology - Isolation - was published by Titan Books in September 2022. The second book in the Writing series, Writing the Future, was published in September 2023, and the third, Writing The Murder, is forthcoming in 2024.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Braid Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
10:00 AM10:00
Workshop: Working With An Editor - Why? What? How?
… (some of) your questions answered
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?
Helen 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!
Your Workshop Leader
Helen is a freelance editor who has worked in the publishing industry since the early 1990s (starting out as an editorial assistant and working up through typesetting, production and project management to managing editor at Edinburgh publisher Canongate). Freelance since 2008, she has also worked as digital resource creator for museums, and delighted in doing the MLitt in Fantasy at Glasgow (2015–17). She mentors beginning writers and could talk endlessly about publishing and editing … and pretty much anything else!
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Cheviot Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
to Jun 2
Workshop: Creating and Running Critique Groups
We all know that getting feedback is one of the best ways to improve as a writer, whether you’re working on short stories or novels. But how do you find great feedback partners, run effective critique groups and build the communities and connections that will help you thrive as a writer.
Join novelists Nicholas Binge and Dave Goodman as they discuss their experiences building writing communities and close-knit critique groups. Learn why communities are important and what to look for when you’re trying to find like-minded writers. Then learn more about the ins and outs of running a successful critique group and how to identify both what you need from a group and what you can bring to one.
Your Workshop Leaders
Nicholas Binge is a bestselling author of speculative thrillers, literary science-fiction, and horror, including Ascension (2023) and Professor Everywhere (2020). His work has been featured The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, and more, as well as being translated into nine languages and nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards. Outside of his own writing, he lectures in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University.
David Goodman is a novelist and short story writer based in East Lothian, Scotland. His debut novel, A Reluctant Spy, is out from Headline Books on September 12th 2024. He has been previously published in Clarkesworld and Analog Magazines, but also writes in a range of other genres, from spy novels to space operas. He is represented by Harry Illingworth of DHH Literary. Learn more and subscribe to his monthly newsletter at www.davidgoodman.net.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Lomond Room
Tickets: £10/ £8 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
10:15 AM10:15
Eldritch Gods and Other Uninvited Guests with Mark Stay and Charles Stross
Guess who’s coming for dinner?
In the latest installment in Mark Stay’s The Witches of Woodville series, the Holly King hosting the Yuletide celebrations, and its an invitation that can’t be refused. Meanwhile, in Britain under the New Management, the Prime Minister is an eldritch god of unimaginable power, true Charles Stross style.
Mark Stay is a novelist and screenwriter. His Witches of Woodville series is published by Simon & Schuster, and his new film Unwelcome premiered at the Sitges Festival, and was released by Warner Bros. in 2023. Mark Stay got a part-time Christmas job at Waterstone’s in the nineties (back when it still had an apostrophe) and somehow ended up working in publishing for over 25 years. He would write in his spare time and sometimes those writings would get turned into books and films. Mark was also co-presenter of the Bestseller Experiment podcast, the award-winning podcast* which has inspired writers all over the world to finish and publish their books. Born in London, he lives in Kent with Youtube gardener Claire Burgess and a declining assortment of retired chickens.
Follow Mark x at @markstay and on Instagram @mark.stay
Charles Stross is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of seven Hugo-nominated novels and winner of three Hugo awards for best novella, two of which are part of the Laundry Files series, Stross’s works have been translated into over twelve languages. As the owner of degrees in pharmacy and computer science, he graduated as the world’s only academically qualified cyberpunk writer just as cyberpunk died. Today he describes his job as telling lies for money and tormenting his imaginary friends. Follow his blog at http://www.accelerando.org/
This event will be chaired by Lucy Holland.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
10:30 AM10:30
Digital Workshop: Writing Immersive Fight Scenes
Whether you’re writing a brawl in a saloon, transporting readers to an underground fight club, or designing the martial art of an ancient alien race, this workshop will help you write convincing and compelling fight scenes. This workshop is relevant for writers of any level and genre, from established novelists to those who want to write their first ever fight scene.
By the end of this workshop, you should be able to:
Understand and convey the influences of character on fighting style
Use setting to inform the creation of fictional fights
Write believable and compelling fighting techniques and strategies
Understand and convey the thoughts and emotions of those involved in fighting
Assign believable fight injuries and damage outcomes to their characters
Avoid common misconceptions and mistakes that can break the reader's immersion
Your Workshop Leader
Josh Holton is a writer and a fighter with more than a decade of experience in mixed martial arts and street fighting. He has studied and coached in a variety of martial arts and has befriended and fought fighters from all over the world. His writing has been published in numerous lit mags, anthologies, and podcasts, and he placed in Streetcake’s Experimental Writing Prize, Spread the Word’s Life Writing Prize, and the Writers’ and Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize. Find him on X @JHoltonWriter
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
11:45 AM11:45
Growing Pains with Susan Dennard, V.V. James and Joma West
Growing up is hard, be it in a not-so-secret society of witches, a family of monster hunters or quite literally in two different worlds. Join authors Susan Dennard, V.V. James and Joma West as they explore the trials and tribulations of their protagonists in their journey towards adulthood.
Susan Dennard is the award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Luminaries trilogy, the Witchlands series (now in development for TV from the Jim Henson Company), and the Something Strange and Deadly series—in addition to various other fiction published online. Before becoming an author, she got to travel the world with her M.Sc. in marine biology. She also runs the popular newsletter for writers, the Misfits and Daydreamers. When not writing or teaching writing, she can be found reading, playing with her toddler, or mashing buttons on one of her way too many consoles.
Vic/V.V. James is the author of the SANCTUARY universe books, now a major AMC streaming series. SANCTUARY is a tale of secrets, twisted friendship, and a modern-day witch-hunt when a small town spins out of control following accusations of murder by magic. The followup, BITTERSHORE, is out this autumn. James also wrote the Dark Gifts trilogy, beginning with GILDED CAGE, which was a Radio 2 Book Club and 2018 World Book Night pick, and won the Prix Imaginales, Europe’s foremost SFF award. When not writing, she makes political documentaries for the BBC.
Joma West is a third culture writer whose work straddles both fantasy and science fiction. Growing up bouncing between countries has given her work a certain displaced flavor and you can see many African and Asian influences in her writing. Joma's novella, Wild, won the 2016 MMU novella award and her 2022 debut novel, Face, was met with acclaim. She lives in Glasgow.
Her latest book is Twice Lived.
Follow Joma on X @JomaWest
This event will be chaired by Eleanor Pender.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
12:00 PM12:00
Dark Encounters with Em Reed and Lorraine Wilson
From the people in the supermarket to that couple on the beach, few of the encounters in the new books by Em Reed and Lorraine Wilson are benign. Watch out who you trust!
Em Reed is a writer and researcher currently based in Glasgow. Their background includes art history, museum studies and creative writing but they also enjoy experimenting with small game tools in their spare time. Their work on science fiction, technology, and art history has previously appeared in Real Life, The Serving Library and Murdered Futures: A Cronenberg Zine. Originally from Central Pennsylvania, they now work as an editor in Glasgow, where they also publish zines through Plaintext Distro, and online interactive fiction through the digital art collective Domino Club.
Visit Em on X dayofthemutants and on their website
Lorraine Wilson is a third culture Scot, conservation scientist and award-winning author of speculative fiction influenced by folklore and the wilderness. She has published two novels with Luna Press - the dystopian thriller This Is Our Undoing, and the dark folkloric mystery, The Way The Light Bends. Her third book, Mother Sea, published in 2023 by Fairlight Books, is an exploration of motherhood, climate change and belonging. Her new novella The Last to Drown was published by Luna Press in February 2024.
Follow Raine on X @raine_clouds, on Instagram @raine_clouds_writes and on Bluesky @rainewilson.bsky.social
This event will be chaired by Lyndsey Croal.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
12:15 PM12:15
Workshop: Sci-Fi Songwriting
Where do songs come from? Where do they go? Can anyone tell me? Does anyone know?
Join singer-songwriter Dan Collins for an in-depth workshop on the mysterious art of songwriting with particular reference to the music of Science-Fiction.
During the 90 minute session we will discuss techniques that you can use in your creative practice and examine songs written by Dan for his hit show Dune! The Musical.
This workshop is open to anyone who is musically inclined; whether you are a beginner or an old hand, everyone wants to write better songs and by the end of the class your head will be full of ideas and inspiration.
Your Workshop Leader
Dan Collins is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, comedian, playwright and clown. At last year's Cymera festival he debuted his one-man show Dune! The Musical which retells the titular sci-fi classic with the aid of 15 original songs which borrow from a number of influences and genres.
His repertoire includes ballads, anthems, ditties and bops, and he is most at home behind a short-scale guitar and almost always uses standard tuning.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Braid Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
12:15 PM12:15
Workshop: Create Your Own Fantasy Map
Drawing elaborate maps to support your world-building, novels, or games can be daunting. We can all scribble some wobbly lines and claim it’s a continent. And we can all scrawl HERE BE MOUNTAINS and hope for the best. But taking these ‘sketches’ and turning them into a thing of beauty is something quite different. Indeed, for most, it seems impossible.
Andy Law, professional cartographer, intends to prove that assumption incorrect.
This workshop, targeted at beginners and professionals alike, will take you step-by-step through creating your own fantasy maps. Using an easy-to-follow process, Andy will show you how to create cartographical wonders that will never fail to impress.
Your Workshop Leader
Andy Law has been professionally mapping fan-favourite settings for over two decades. He has worked for many companies including Critical Role, Games Workshop, and Penguin Random House. He has contributed to settings including Game of Thrones, Tal'Dorei, Dragon Age, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, and Thunderbirds. Andy is also an award-winning games designer and writer, and he streams online weekly about world-building and games. He lives in Edinburgh with his gaming family, where he works for Rookery Publications, a games company he co-owns with some of the best people in the world.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Cheviot Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
1:00 PM13:00
Digital Workshop: Getting Your Book Ready For Submission
Agent Caro Clarke breaks down how to craft a query letter and make your submission shine.
They will go through what information to include, how to catch an agent's attention and some of the Do's and Don't's to help you on your road to pitching your writing to agents and publishers.
Your Workshop Leader
Caro Clarke is a literary agent with over thirteen years' experience in publishing – at Transworld (PRH) and at Canongate Books as a Senior Rights Manager. They were named Rights Professional of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2021. In 2019, they co-founded the Nan Shepherd Prize for underrepresented nature writers, which kickstarted a passion to demystify the publishing industry and help emerging writers to develop their craft and build their writing careers. Portobello Literary was established in 2022 to build on that work.
Writers they have worked with have won or been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Saltire National Book Awards, Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize, Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, Forward Prize, Morley Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour, Mo Siewcharran Prize, Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, Northern Writers Award, Nan Shepherd Prize, Laurel Prize, Nature Chronicles Prize, Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Eric Gregory Award, Women in Journalism Georgina Henry award, SI Leeds Literary Award and the Frank Allen Bullock Creative Writing Prize.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
1:30 PM13:30
The Sunlit Lands with Eliza Chan and Natasha Pulley
Happiness, prosperity and good fortune await!
In Eliza Chan’s debut novel Fathomfolk, Revolution is brewing in the semi-submerged city of Tiankawi, between humans and the fathomfolk who live in its waters, while Natasha Pulley’s terraformed Mars may be Utopia for some, but for others it’s life sentence to hard labour and ferocious discrimination. Join our panel as they explore the themes of diaspora, immigration and class in their latest novels..
Eliza Chan is a Scottish-born speculative fiction author who writes about East Asian mythology, British folklore and reclaiming the dragon lady. Her short fiction has been published in The Dark, Podcastle, Fantasy Magazine and The Best of British Fantasy. Her debut novel FATHOMFOLK — inspired by mythology, ESEAN cities and diaspora feels — was published by Orbit in Feb 2024.
She has been a medical school drop-out, a kilt shop assistant, an English teacher and a speech and language therapist, but currently she spends her time tabletop gaming, cosplaying, crafting and toddler wrangling.
Find out more on her website www.elizachan.co.uk. Follow Eliza on X, Instagram and Bluesky @elizachanwrites
Natasha Pulley is the author of really quite a lot of books. An international bestseller, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, the Locus Awards, and remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for much of summer 2016. The Bedlam Stacks was longlisted for the Walter Scott Award and shortlisted for the Encore Award. The Mars House is her first science fiction novel, published by Gollancz.
Natasha has lived in Japan as a Daiwa Scholar, as well as China and Peru. She was a 2016 Gladstone Writer in Residence, and she teaches on Bath Spa University’s Creative Writing BA and MA, alongside short courses at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.
This event is chaired by Cailean Steed.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
1:45 PM13:45
Fearful Powers with Zulekha A. Afzal and Molly X Chang
Royal assassins and forbidden love! Join Zulekha A. Afzal and Molly X Chang as they share the stories of - and behind - their Romantasy debuts Dancers of the Dawn and To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods.
Zulekhá A. Afzal grew up in Cornwall. She now lives in Bath where she studied English Literature with Creative Writing and completed the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. When she isn’t writing or working as an editorial assistant, you can find Zulekhá in a ballet class.
Follow Zulekhá on X, Instagram, Threads and TikTok zulekhaa_afzal
Born in Harbin, China, Molly X. Chang was raised on folklore told by the grandparents who taught her to take pride in the heritages and cultures that shaped her life, and the harrowing history of the ancestors who'd come before her. To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is her debut novel.
Visit Molly on X, Instagram and TikTok @mollyxchang
This event will be chaired by Nyla Ahmad
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
2:15 PM14:15
Agent One to Ones Saturday
Writers will have the invaluable opportunity to talk directly to an agent from a literary agency or an editor from a SFFH publisher about their work, seek advice about any stage of the writing process, and receive direct feedback on pitches and ideas.
Meet our Agent
SOLD OUT John Baker from Bell Lomax Moreton
SOLD OUT Alice Caprio from Felicity Bryan Associates
Lina Langlee from North Literary Agency
Meetings will be 15 minutes long, and there will be a £25 fee. For the in-person meetings, please select which Agent you’d like to speak to on booking. Please note spaces are limited.
By booking tickets for this event, you are committing to submitting your submission letter and the first 2000 words of your novel (or less) by Monday 06.05.2024
Please send your material to admin@cymerafestival.co.uk
Booking Deadline Monday 6th May 2024. Please note that our Agent One to One sessions book out very quickly.
Jun
1
2:15 PM14:15
Page One Live Podcast
Join podcasters Marco Rinaldi and Tariq Ashkanani for a live recording of their writing podcast, Page One – with a special guest yet to be revealed.
On Page One - The Writer’s Podcast, Marco and Tariq talk to writers of all kinds, from bestselling authors to screenwriters to comic writers to learn about how they go about creating their stories.
Don't miss a deep dive into each guest’s writing history, including how they broke into the industry, their writing process and an exploration of their work. There might even be a sneak peek of upcoming projects!
The #Cymera2024 guest has not been revealed yet, so watch this space.
Venue: Lomond Room
Free but ticketed.
This event is in person.
Jun
1
3:15 PM15:15
It's Complicated with S.T. Gibson, Sydney J. Shields and Georgia Summers
Friends, lovers, parents, siblings - relationships are rarely easy!
S. T. Gibson is a literary agent, author, and village wise woman in training. A graduate of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the theological studies program at Princeton Seminary, she currently lives in Boston with her partner, spoiled Persian cat, and vintage blazer collection.
Sydney J. Shields is a swamp creature who evolved to hold a pen. She is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Columbus State University where she majored in Communication. She currently lives in Savannah, Georgia with her partner and their dog. When not writing, Sydney can be found playing chess in the park, savoring afternoon tea, or doing any other activities that an 84-year-old soul trapped in a 25-year-old body would enjoy. You can find her across social media @SydneyJShields.
Georgia Summers is a half-British, half-Trinidadian writer. She spent most of her life living across the world, including Russia, Colombia, the USA, Scotland, and briefly Switzerland. She is still bad at languages. She has previously worked as an editor, a bookseller and rare books student librarian, so you could say she’s seen the entire lifecycle of a book. When she’s not doing bookish things, she enjoys embroidery, playing piano, and painting, among various other crafts. She currently lives in London, but she dreams of one day living in a haunted château with cats and a ghost that cleans.
This event will be chaired by Kaite Welsh
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
3:30 PM15:30
Past, Present, Future with Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, William Letford and EJ Swift
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson is the Sunday Times Bestselling author of The Order of Legends trilogy. Inaugural winner of Future Worlds Prize Award in 2020, her debut novel, The Principle of Moments, was published in January 2024 , by Gollancz. She holds a BA in English Literature and Classical Studies from the University of Exeter, where she enjoyed writing essays on Disney villains and reading Greek lyric poetry in the same day. As an author of Nigerian, Jamaican, and British-Australian heritage, her work primarily focuses on people who live at the intersection of identities, whether that’s here on Earth, or in far away galaxies of her own creation.
William Letford published his first collection of poetry while working as a roofer. Since then, his work has been adapted into film, projected onto buildings, carved into monuments, adapted for the stage, written onto skin, cast out over the radio, and performed by orchestras.
He has helped restore a medieval village in the mountains of Northern Italy, taught English in Japan, fished with his bare hands in Indonesia, been invited to perform in Iraq, South Korea, Lebanon, Australia, Germany, India, Palestine, and many more countries.
Follow William on X @BillyLetford
E. J. Swift is the author of speculative fiction novels including The Osiris Project trilogy, a series set in a world radically altered by climate change, and Paris Adrift, a tale of bartenders and time travel in the City of Light. Her novel The Coral Bones was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Kitschies Red Tentacle and the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award for Best Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies and has been longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award.
Follow E.J. on X, Instagram and Bluesky @catamaroon
This event will be chaired by Beth Cochrane.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
3:30 PM15:30
Open Mic
Do you have a fresh piece of writing ready for the world to see? Then we want your reading! Poetry, a bit of a novel or short fiction, we love it all!
Readings should be no longer than five minutes
There will be two in-person open mic session over the festival weekend.
The Open Mic will take place in the Pleasance Bar at the following times
Saturday 1st June 3pm to 3:30pm
Sunday 2nd June 1:30pm to 2pm
To join us in person, please apply here
Submission deadline is Sunday 19th May 2024.
Venue: Pleasance Bar
Free, no ticket needed.
Jun
1
4:00 PM16:00
Workshop: Historical Fantasy: Writing Cross-Genre with Lucy Holland
Historical fantasy combines what I see as the best parts of historical fiction and fantasy, but it is neither wholly one nor the other, and comes with a unique set of challenges. This worldbuilding workshop offers an in-depth and inspiring practical session for authors who seek guidance on how to integrate elements of both genres into their work.
The topics you will cover include:
Finding the right historical era for your story
Incorporating fantastical elements into well-known or recognisable settings
Using existing myth and folklore as inspiration
Beyond the desk: different methods of research
Writing inclusively within a historical context
How to build a believable atmosphere without resorting to archaic or anachronistic anguage
Finding story in the landscape
Engaging with contemporary issues in historical settings
This workshop takes the form of a presentation, making use of group discussion and active writing exercises to help put theory into practice. The aim is for participants to leave not only with new ideas, but a better understanding of how these genres can effectively and imaginatively intersect.
Your Workshop Leader
Lucy Holland is the author of The Times bestselling Sistersong, which was a finalist for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2022. Her second historical fantasy novel, Song of the Huntress, is published by Pan Macmillan in 2024. As Lucy Hounsom, she wrote the Worldmaker Trilogy. She worked twelve years in corporate account sales for Waterstones Booksellers before becoming a full-time author. Lucy co-hosts the intersectional feminist podcast ‘Breaking the Glass Slipper’, which won Best Audio in the 2019 British Fantasy Awards. She lives in Devon.
Follow Lucy on X, Bluesky and Instagram @silvanhistorian and on her Facebook page
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Braid Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
4:00 PM16:00
Workshop: Drawing Fantasy Characters with Hannah Kelly
Pictish symbols carved into rocks. Boats hewn from the trunks of trees. Amulets, crowns and gravestones. Come and use artefacts from our Scottish history to springboard ideas for a fantasy character or creature. I'll start us off with some silly drawing games, then give you prompts and skills to develop figures and stories from ancient objects. You'll sketch, draw and play throughout, finishing with a fantasy character of your own design.
Suitable for Adults, Teens. (12+)
All materials provided. Any skill level welcome!
Your Workshop Leader
Hannah Kelly is a fantasy writer & 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.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Cheviot Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
1
5:00 PM17:00
Creating Legends with Kate Heartfield and Sophie Keetch
We love a fresh retelling, especially those in a non-classical canon.
From Kate Heartfield comes a glorious, lyrical retelling of one of Norse mythology’s greatest epics. Brynhild, Gudrun and Sigurd are destined to be lovers, fated as enemies. But here on Midgard, legends can be lies. For not all heroes are heroic, nor all monsters monstrous. And a shieldmaiden may yet find that love is the greatest weapon of all.
With My Name is Morgan and its sequel Le Fay, Sophie Keetch give us an atmospheric, feminist retelling of the early life of famed villainess Morgan le Fay, set against the colourful chivalric backdrop of Arthurian legend.
Kate Heartfield is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling The Embroidered Book, the Aurora-winning novel Armed in Her Fashion, and the Nebula-shortlisted novella Alice Payne Arrives, along with dozens of other stories. Her interactive fiction projects The Road to Canterbury and The Magician’s Workshop were shortlisted for the Nebula in game writing. She lives in Canada.
Find Kate on X, Instagram at @kateheartfield, on Bluesky at @kateheartfield.com and her facebook page
Sophie Keetch has a BA in English Literature from Cardiff University, which included the study of Arthurian legend. She is Welsh and lives with her husband and son in South Wales.
Follow Sophie on X @SophKWrites and on Instagram, Thread and Bluesky @sophiekeetchauthor
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £6 digital ticket.
Jun
1
5:00 PM17:00
Time Travels with Poppy Kuroki and Nigel Planer
When Jeremiah Bourne, the hero of Nigel Planer’s debut novel Jeremiah Bourne in Time, is swept from his crumbling home in Blackfriars in 2019, to the same house but in 1910, he suddenly faces two questions: how did he get here, and how can he get back to his own time?
Meanwhile Poppy Kuroki’s debut novel Gate to Kagoshima introduces the reader to Isla., who travels back to Kagoshima in 1877, amid the dawn of the Satsuma Rebellion – the conflict that ended the samurai. When she meets Keiichiro Maeda, a samurai who introduces her to a way of life only previously encountered in books, Isla begins to wonder if she has found her true home.
Poppy was born in Scotland and has been living in Japan since 2014. Her ANCESTOR MEMORIES series was bought at auction by Oneworld in the UK. Film and TV rights have been optioned by Westbrook, Will Smith’s production company. GATE TO KAGOSHIMA (BOOK 1), a sweeping historical fantasy set in samurai-era Japan, releases in summer 2024.
Poppy loves video games, cooking, history, and reading books of any genre. She lives in a beautiful town near the sea with her husband and son.
Follow Poppy on X, Instagram, and TikTok @kurokibooks
A founder member of the Comedy Store and Comic Strip in the 80s, Nigel continues to pursue a successful career as actor and singer in all media, which includes the creation of the characters Neil the Hippy, and Nicholas Craig the Thespian.
He has written novels, non-fiction and comedy books as well as stage and radio plays, poetry and scripts for TV – including over 100 episodes of the Magic Roundabout.
He has recently recorded several of the songs he wrote in the 1970s which are available on Bandcamp.com. Jeremiah Bourne in Time is his first adventure in time.
Find Nigel on X and Instagram @NigelPlaner1, on his Facebook page and patreon
This event will be chaired by Philippa Cochrane.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
5:00 PM17:00
Launch: The Utopia of Us
The year 2024 marks the centenary of the first publication of the hugely significant novel We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The direct inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984, We also influenced many other novels, such as Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano.
Strikingly, the Russian novel was first published in English, and in the US. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1988 that it was published in the author’s native country. Clearly, this was a book that the people in power in the Soviet Union wanted erased. Yet it ushered in a new genre – the future dystopia – and in doing so gave birth to the many dystopian novels and films which have found their way into our popular culture.
To celebrate the centenary of We, Edinburgh-based indie publisher Luna Press is delighted to publish an anthology of science fiction stories inspired by the novel.
The Utopia of Us is edited by Teika Marija Smits and boasts an incredible line-up of contributors - come along to help us launch it!
Jun
1
5:15 PM17:15
Arctic Horrors with C.J. Cooke, Tim Lebbon and Ally Wilkes
Welcome to the far north, where icy winds howl in long dark nights, or across skies where the sun doesn’t set.. This is the perfect setting for a horror, and we are excited to welcome three masters of the genre with C.J. Cooke, Tim Lebbon and Ally Wilkes. Be ready to be chilled to the bone.
C J Cooke (Carolyn Jess-Cooke) lives in Glasgow with her husband and four children. C J Cooke's works have been published in 23 languages and have won many awards. She holds a PhD in Literature from the Queen's University of Belfast and is currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, where she researches creative writing interventions for mental health. Two of her books are currently optioned for film.
Tim Lebbon is the New York Times bestselling author of Eden, Coldbrook, The Silence, and the Relics trilogy. He has also written many successful movie novelizations and tie-ins for Alien and Firefly. Tim has won a World Fantasy Award, four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, a Tombstone and been a finalist for the International Horror Guild and World Fantasy Awards. The Silence is now a gripping Netflix movie starring Stanley Tucci and Kiernan Shipka.
Follow Tim on X and Instagram @timlebbon
Ally Wilkes grew up in a succession of isolated—possibly haunted—country houses and boarding schools. After studying law at Oxford, she went on to spend eleven years as a criminal barrister, learning how extreme situations bring out the best (or worst) in human nature. Ally now lives in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton and far too many books about Polar exploration. When she isn't writing or reading horror, she's usually to be found hanging upside-down (like a bat) from her aerial silks.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
6:30 PM18:30
Dune! The Musical
A memoir in song by the Earl of Caladan, trusted adviser to the Padisha Emperor and beloved troubadour-warrior, the bard Gurney Halleck.
Following the success of his work on "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" Gurney will perform hits from his back catalogue and introduce never-before-heard songs from his time among the Fremen.
Sing along with little Paul Atreides on his journey to Sietch Tabr; can he tame the worm, save the world AND get the girl?
Forget everything you know about Arrakis and get ready for Dune! The Musical
About the Performer
Dan Collins is a musician, writer and amateur clown with too much time on his hands. He enjoys reading sci-fi and telling stories.
"Imagine if Robert Smith and Clancy Brown taught an Irishman to play for tourists, but bald...and shorter"
Venue: Cabaret Bar
Running Time: 60 minutes, no break
Tickets: £10/£8 plus 50p booking fee
Jun
1
6:30 PM18:30
A Rose Appears: Test Phase
A shadowy organisation hires three scientists to experiment with an extra-terrestrial element which might hold the key to teleportation. When one of them is unexpectedly killed by the machine, it is up to her colleagues to solve the puzzle – or face the consequences of failure. Their employer demands more human testing, but will their consciences allow it? And what will they discover if they continue to tug at the curtain of the known universe?
As the research progresses, essential boundaries - between knowledge and faith, reality and delusion, reason and instinct - become terrifyingly thin.
This work-in-progress storytelling event provides a first look at an original sci-fi horror story by Dave Robb (The Devil in the Belfry), directed by Flavia D’Avila (The Devil in the Belfry, The Rotting Hart).
Content warnings: references to mental illness, violence, discriminatory language, drug use.
Jun
1
6:30 PM18:30
Love Stories with Sylvie Cathrall, Sangu Mandanna and S. A. MacLean
Sylvie Cathrall writes stories of hope and healing with healthy doses of wonder and whimsy. She holds a graduate degree in odd Victorian art and has handled more than a few nineteenth-century letters (with great care). Sylvie married her former pen pal and lives in the mountains, where she dresses impractically and dreams of the sea.
Sangu Mandanna was four years old when an elephant chased her down a forest road and she decided to write her first story about it. Seventeen years and many, many manuscripts later, she signed her first book deal. Sangu now lives in Norwich, a city in the east of England, with her husband and kids.
S. A. MacLean is a romantasy author from sunny California. Infatuated with magical worlds since her days of brewing mud potions in her childhood garden, she fell in love with the romantasy genre after realizing all her favourite fantasy novels had kisses in them. Her stories invariably feature quirky humour, sassy animal companions, and queer casts who represent her voice as a chaotic bisexual woman.
Sarah received her BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University and a PhD in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley. If you think that sounds overly pedantic, well, she agrees! So she left the research track to teach environmental science at her local community college, inspiring the next generation of students to save the planet. Her ecology background seeps into her fantasy worlds as odd plants and an obnoxious number of bird references.
She currently lives in California with her partner, two cats, and a growing saltwater aquarium.
This event will be chaired by Alice Tarbuck.
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £6 digital ticket.
Jun
1
6:45 PM18:45
In Search of a New Eden with Oliver Langmead, Ken MacLeod and Adrian Tchaikovsky
Oliver K. Langmead writes speculative fiction. His new verse-novel, Calypso, will be published by Titan Books in 2024. Glitterati, was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award in 2023, and named one of New Scientist’s best Science Fiction books of 2022, and the French edition of Birds of Paradise, Les Oiseaux du Paradis, was published summer 2023. He is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster, and in late 2018 he was the writer in residence at the European Space Agency’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne.
Ken MacLeod is the author of 20 novels. The Sky Road and The Night Sessions won the BSFA Award, and his various books have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Memorial awards on multiple occasions. Prior to becoming a novelist, MacLeod studied biology and worked as a computer programmer. Ken has been chosen as a Guest of Honor at the 82nd Worldcon taking place in Glasgow in August 2024.
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Lincolnshire and studied zoology and psychology at Reading before becoming a professional author in 2007. He is a keen role-player and board gamer and is trained in stage-fighting. Adrian primarily explores deep themes, such as artificial intelligence and alien awareness within epic galactic and fantastical settings. He has a deep interest in the animal world specifically insects from his studies in Zoology and has a particular penchant for spiders.
This event will be chaired by Stark Holborn.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
7:00 PM19:00
Small Town Problems with Tori Bovalino and Max Turner
Nosy neighbours and a lack of amenities are the least of the problems the main protagonists of Tori Bovalino’s and Max Turner’s books face. Expect missing children and dark secrets to feature in this folk horror panel.
Tori Bovalino (she/her) is the author of three YA horror novels, including My Throat an Open Grave, and edited the Indie-bestselling anthology, The Gathering Dark. Tori also writes adult fantasy as V.L. Bovalino. She is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and now lives in the UK with her partner and their very loud cat. Tori loves scary stories, obscure academic book facts, and impractical, oversized sweaters. She can be found on Instagram as @toribovalino.
Max Turner is a gay transgender fella living in the UK. He is a nerd, Intersectional Feminist, and a retired performer and show producer. He writes speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, furry fiction, horror and LGBTQ+ fiction. This includes gay and trans romance and erotica. Max is also the publisher of A Coup of Owls quarterly online anthology and print anthologies.
Currently undergoing Parenting 101, he can be found hanging on for dear life to the nearest cup of strong coffee. Max has also written under the name L.E. Turner
This event will be chaired by PM Freestone
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
1
8:30 PM20:30
Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms
Join us for this amateur production of Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms adapted for stage by Stephen Briggs.
Scarcely a year on from the events of Guards! Guards!, the Ankh-Morpork City Night Watch find their services are once more needed to tackle a threat to their city. A threat at least as deadly as a 60-foot dragon, but mechanical and heartless to boot. It kills without compunction. It is the first gun on the Discworld.
The original Watch - Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, Corporal Carrot and Corporal Nobbs - are joined by some new recruits, selected to reflect the city's ethnic make-up - Lance-Constable Cuddy (a dwarf), Detritus (a troll) and Angua (a w..., well, best to find out for yourself)..
Brought to the stage by Edinburgh-based company Strawmoddie Theatre
Venue: Theatre
Running Time: approx 2 hours 30 minutes including interval
Performance dates and times
Thursday 30th May: 7:30pm
Friday 31st Maty: 8:30pm
Saturday 1st June: 8:30pm
Sunday 2nd June: 5pm
Please note that the venue has unreserved seating. Please arrive in good time to secure seats.
The venue has limited wheelchair spaces. Please let us know when booking if you require one. All wheelchair spaces have now been allocated for the Sunday performance.
Jun
1
8:30 PM20:30
Shoreline of Infinity's Event Horizon
Presented by the award-winning folks of Shoreline of Infinity, Edinburgh's Science Fiction cabaret night comes to CYMERA.
A stunning night of sumptuous science fictional words and music.
Line up to be announced.
Featuring the Cymera/Shoreline winning story!
Jun
1
8:45 PM20:45
Many Shades of Darkness with Elle Nash, Kaaron Warren and Johanna Van Veen
Horror is often considered the most diverse genre to read and write. From body horror to ghost stories, join us on this Saturday night to explore the many shades of darkness with authors Elle Nash, Kaaron Warren and Johanna Van Veen.
Elle Nash is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in O Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.” Upon publication of her novel in the UK, she appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to present the work of under-represented voices with Amnesty International, and to speak about sex, death and feminism in literature. Her work appears in Guernica, Adroit, The Creative Independent, Hazlitt, Literary Hub, Cosmopolitan, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine. She currently lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
Kaaron Warren is the author of the novels Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, Tide of Stone and The Grief Hole and the short story collections Through Splintered Walls, The Grinding House, and Dead Sea Fruit. Her short stories have won her a Shirley Jackson Award, as well as multiple Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards and Aurealis Awards. She lives in Canberra, Australia.
Johanna grew up in the Netherlands together with her two sisters. The three of them are triplets, though her sisters are identical to each other and she’s different, a fact she didn’t discover until she was five years old; at least, unlike most people, she can pinpoint the exact moment she became self-aware.
She has received an MA in English Literature with a specialisation in early modern literature, as well as an MA Book and Digital Media with a specialisation in early modern book history, both of them at Leiden University. She currently works as an editor for a big company that sends a lot of reports and letters out every day, all of them requiring a lot of love and attention to make sure that every comma is where it should be. This job gives her enough time to write (mostly queer gothic) novels. When she isn’t doing any of those things, she enjoys spending time with her girlfriend, her sisters, and her dog, though not necessarily all at the same time. My Darling Dreadful Thing is her debut novel.
This event will be chaired by Rhiannn Grist.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
2
10:00 AM10:00
Opposites Attract with Sarah A. Parker and Chloe C. Peñaranda
Love is in the air with these two Romantasy debuts.
Born in New Zealand, Sarah A. Parker now lives on the Gold Coast with her husband and three young children. When she’s not reading or tapping away at her keyboard, she’s spending time with her friends and family, her plants, and enjoying trips to the snow. Sarah has been writing since she was small, but has only recently begun sharing her stories with the world. When the Moon Hatched is her debut.
Chloe C. Peñaranda is the USA Today bestselling author of The Nytefall Trilogy and An Heir Comes to Rise Series.
A lifelong avid reader and writer, Chloe discovered her passion for storytelling in her early teens. Her stories have been spun from years of building on fictional characters and exploring Tolkien-like quests in made up worlds. During her time at the University of the West of Scotland, Chloe immersed herself in writing for short film, producing animations, and spending class time dreaming of far off lands.
In her spare time from writing in her home in scenic Scotland, Chloe enjoys digital art, graphic design, and down time with her three little dogs. When the real world calls...she rarely listens.
Originally self-published, The Stars are Dying is Chloe’s traditionally published debut.
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £6 digital ticket.
Jun
2
10:00 AM10:00
Agent One to One with John Baker
Writers will have the invaluable opportunity to talk directly to an agent from a literary agency or an editor from a SFFH publisher about their work, seek advice about any stage of the writing process, and receive direct feedback on pitches and ideas.
Meet our Agent
John Baker from Bell Lomax Moreton
Meetings will be 15 minutes long, and there will be a £25 fee. For the in-person meetings, please select which Agent you’d like to speak to on booking. Please note spaces are limited.
By booking tickets for this event, you are committing to submitting your submission letter and the first 2000 words of your novel (or less) by Monday 06.05.2024
Please send your material to admin@cymerafestival.co.uk
Booking Deadline Monday 6th May 2024. Please note that our Agent One to One sessions book out very quickly.
Jun
2
10:00 AM10:00
There’s Been A Murder with Amy Goldsmith, T.L. Huchu and Frances White
Murder follows the main protagonists of the new books by Amy Goldsmith, T.L. Huchu and Frances White. Are you ready to take a trip to the scenes of the crime?
Amy Goldsmith grew up on the south coast of England, obsessed with obscure 70s horror movies and antiquarian ghost stories. She studied Psychology at the University of Sussex and, after gaining her Postgraduate Certificate in Education, moved to inner London to teach. Now, she lives back on the south coast where she still teaches English and spends her weekends trawling antiques shops for haunted mirrors. She is the author of Those We Drown and the forthcoming YA horror novel Our Wicked Histories.
T. L. Huchu has been published previously (as Tendai Huchu) in the adult market, but the Edinburgh Nights series is his genre fiction debut. His previous books (The Hairdresser of Harare and The Maestro, The Magistrate and the Mathematician) have been translated into multiple languages and his short fiction has won awards. Tendai grew up in Zimbabwe but has lived in Edinburgh for most of his adult life.
Frances White is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Voyage of the Damned, a fantasy murder mystery at sea. Born in Leicester and now a Nottingham resident, Frances is a creative writing graduate from Royal Holloway University of London. She has a soft spot for writing unlikely, flawed, messy heroes and loves mixing humour and heartbreak. Frances is passionate about bringing more LGBTQIA+ representation and fat positivity into fantasy. When not writing, she can be found sewing costumes for comic conventions or researching obscure historical facts. She also loves to perform on stage, with a fondness for musicals and Shakespeare.
This event will be chaired by Kshoni Gunputh.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
2
10:00 AM10:00
Workshop: Getting Your Book Ready For Submission
Agent Caro Clarke breaks down how to craft a query letter and make your submission shine.
They will go through what information to include, how to catch an agent's attention and some of the Do's and Don't's to help you on your road to pitching your writing to agents and publishers.
Your Workshop Leader
Caro Clarke is a literary agent with over thirteen years' experience in publishing – at Transworld (PRH) and at Canongate Books as a Senior Rights Manager. They were named Rights Professional of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2021. In 2019, they co-founded the Nan Shepherd Prize for underrepresented nature writers, which kickstarted a passion to demystify the publishing industry and help emerging writers to develop their craft and build their writing careers. Portobello Literary was established in 2022 to build on that work.
Writers they have worked with have won or been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Saltire National Book Awards, Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize, Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, Forward Prize, Morley Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour, Mo Siewcharran Prize, Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, Northern Writers Award, Nan Shepherd Prize, Laurel Prize, Nature Chronicles Prize, Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Eric Gregory Award, Women in Journalism Georgina Henry award, SI Leeds Literary Award and the Frank Allen Bullock Creative Writing Prize.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Braid Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
2
10:00 AM10:00
Workshop: Dialogue and Characterisation: What You Say, How You Say It
This interactive craft workshop will explore effective charactersation in prose fiction. We'll look at point of view, dialogue, and character description, with a series of guided exercises (sharing optional). Learn about conversational rhythms and speech patterns, tips and tricks for crafting back-and-forths that are both naturalistic and propulsive, character building through dialogue and description, and how to write thumbnail character sketches that punch above their weight.
Your Workshop Leaders
MK Hardy is the pen name of author duo Morag Hannah and Erin Hardee. Together they write queer speculative fiction of all flavours. Their debut novel, gothic eco-horror THE NEEDFIRE, comes out from Solaris Books in 2025.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Cheviot Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
2
10:30 AM10:30
Digital Workshop: Recycling Magic - The Craft of Turning Old Tales into New Stories
Traditional tales – myths, legends, folktales, fairytales – are the inspiration for most fantasy stories and lots of other genre and literary writing.
Lari Don, author and storyteller, will discuss using aspects of old tales to create new stories, which might be close cousins of the original sources, or such distant relatives that only the writer knows which old tale first sparked the idea.
She will help you explore ways of rethinking, recycling and interrogating the narrative, characters, creatures, magical lore and even plot-holes of old tales, to come up with original and intriguing ideas of your own.
There are no absolutely right or wrong ways to be inspired, to work with ideas and to write your own stories, so this isn’t a workshop about how to do things, more a chance to discover new paths and experiment with magical notions.
If possible please arrive at the workshop with one or two old stories in mind, traditional tales that you’re familiar with and keen to play with.
Your Workshop Leader
Lari Don is a Scottish children’s author and storyteller. Lari has written more than 30 books for children, ranging from picture book retellings of fairy tales and folklore (eg The Secret of the Kelpie, The Legend of the First Unicorn) through fantasy adventures for 8-12 year olds (eg First Aid for Fairies, the Spellchasers Trilogy) to collections of traditional tales (eg Girls Goddesses and Giants, The Dragon’s Hoard) and a YA thriller (MindBlind) which was inspired by a story about the fairy queen, though it’s impossible to spot any fairies past the fight scenes and chases. Lari also loves telling traditional tales to live audiences, preferably in caves and forests. But she’s currently writing very slowly and telling tales only very occasionally, because she’s having to learn to do it all differently round long covid.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
2
11:45 AM11:45
Thrilling Futures with Lauren Beukes, Nikhil Singh and Maud Woolf
From gateways to other worlds to artificial realities to murderous clones, join us for a thrilling look at the future from the imaginations of Lauren Beukes, Nikhil Singh and Maud Woolf.
Lauren Beukes is the award-winning author of six novels, a collection of short stories, a pop history about South African women, and New York Times best-selling comics. Her work has been translated into 26 languages and won prizes across genres from the Arthur C Clarke Award to the Strand Critic’s Choice award and the University of Johannesburg Prize. Her novel, The Shining Girls, about a time-travelling serial killer and the survivor who turns the hunt around is now a major AppleTV series with Elisabeth Moss. Her latest novel, Bridge, about a young woman’s search for her mother across realities is out now. She lives in London with a teenager and two cats.
Find Lauren on socials @laurenbeukes and on TikTok @lauren.beukes
Nikhil Singh is a South African artist, writer and musician. Former projects include the graphic novels: Salem Brownstone written by John Harris Dunning (longlisted for the Branford Boase Award, Walker Books 2009) as well as The Ziggurat (Bell-Roberts 2003) by The Constructus Corporation (now Die Antwoord). His work has also been featured in various magazines including Dazed, i-D Online, Creative Review, as well as Pictures and Words: New Comic Art and Narrative Illustration (Laurence King, 2005). His debut novel Taty Went West was published by Kwani? Trust in 2015, Jacaranda Books (UK) in 2017, and Rosarium (US) in 2018. The book was released with an accompanying soundtrack and was shortlisted for Best African Novel in the inaugural Nommo Awards. His new novel Dakini Atoll is a sequel to his 2020 novel Club Ded which was shortlist for the BSFA and Nommo Awards.
Maud Woolf is a Scottish speculative writer with a particular focus on horror and science fiction. While completing an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, her unpublished novel was shortlisted for the North Lit Agency Prize. Her work has appeared in a variety of online magazines, including Metaphorosis Magazine where her short story ‘The Stranding’ was selected to appear in the Best of Metaphorosis 2020. Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock is her debut novel.
This event will be chaired by Catriona Silvey.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
2
12:00 PM12:00
For Love or Money with Rose Black, Trip Galey and James Logan
Join these intrepid adventurers (authors) in their search for love, treasure or the answers to those secrets that are best left in the dark. Bring snacks and extra socks!
Rose Black is a combination of anxiety and dyslexia in a hoodie, bi, a professional computer wrangler, and mother to the world’s wiggliest child. She’s lucky enough to live in the historic city of Bath and is capable of eating her weight in sushi.
Trip Galey was born in the United States but has now lived in the United Kingdom for over half a decade. He has a Masters from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and a doctorate in Creative Writing, and is a lecturer on the subject in Cambridge, with a focus on sci-fi and fantasy. He has had short stories and articles published in numerous places, such as a multi-award-nominated queer SFF anthology from Neon Hemlock Press, and his first interactive novel came out in 2021 from Choice of Games. He lives in London with his partner.
James Logan was born in the southeast of England where he grew up on a diet of Commodore 64 computer games, Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and classic eighties cartoons, which left him with a love of all things fantastical. He lives in London and works in publishing. The Silverblood Promise is his first novel.
This event will be chaired by Meg MacDonald.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
2
12:15 PM12:15
Workshop: Contract Skills with Francesca Barbini
Francesca Barbini of Luna Press hosts this informative workshop designed to help you develop the essential skills required to read, understand, and negotiate a publishing contract.
Your Workshop Leader
Francesca T Barbini was born and raised in Rome, Italy. After years of volunteer work around the world, she completed a MA Honour in Religious Studies at New College, Edinburgh, focusing on the Ancient Near East and the Dead Sea Scrolls, followed by a PGDE at Edinburgh University. In 2011, she began self-publishing her YA SF series Tijaran Tales, subsequently receiving a publication contract by American Oloris Publishing. In January 2015 she officially started Luna Press Publishing, home of speculative fiction in fiction and academia. In 2018 she won the British Fantasy Award for Non-Fiction, as Editor of Gender Identity and Sexuality in Fantasy and Science Fiction.
About the event:
Running time: 60 minutes
Venue: Lomond Room
Tickets: £10/ £8 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
2
12:15 PM12:15
Workshop: Writing Immersive Fight Scenes
Whether you’re writing a brawl in a saloon, transporting readers to an underground fight club, or designing the martial art of an ancient alien race, this workshop will help you write convincing and compelling fight scenes. This workshop is relevant for writers of any level and genre, from established novelists to those who want to write their first ever fight scene.
By the end of this workshop, you should be able to:
Understand and convey the influences of character on fighting style
Use setting to inform the creation of fictional fights
Write believable and compelling fighting techniques and strategies
Understand and convey the thoughts and emotions of those involved in fighting
Assign believable fight injuries and damage outcomes to their characters
Avoid common misconceptions and mistakes that can break the reader's immersion
Your Workshop Leader
Josh Holton is a writer and a fighter with more than a decade of experience in mixed martial arts and street fighting. He has studied and coached in a variety of martial arts and has befriended and fought fighters from all over the world. His writing has been published in numerous lit mags, anthologies, and podcasts, and he placed in Streetcake’s Experimental Writing Prize, Spread the Word’s Life Writing Prize, and the Writers’ and Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize. Find him on X @JHoltonWriter
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Cheviot Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
2
12:15 PM12:15
Workshop: Writing Ghost Stories with Helen Grant
This workshop invites you to delve into the perennially-popular ghost story. What defines the ghost story? Are there "rules" for ghost story writing? How do we create a genuinely chilling tale? What are the particular challenges when approaching either a short ghost story or a novel length work? And where can you get your ghost story published? Helen Grant examines these and other topics. The session will include hints and tips, discussions and some writing exercises with prompts. Please bring something to write with/on.
Your Workshop Leader
Helen Grant writes Gothic novels and short ghost stories. Joyce Carol Oates has described her as "a brilliant chronicler of the uncanny as only those who dwell in places of dripping, graylit beauty can be." A lifelong fan of the ghost story writer M.R.James, she has spoken at two M.R.James conferences and appeared at the Dublin Ghost Story Festival. Helen's most recent books are Too Near The Dead (2021) and Jump Cut (2023). She lives in Perthshire with her family, and when not writing, she likes to explore abandoned country houses and swim in freezing lochs.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Braid Room
Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
2
1:00 PM13:00
Digital Workshop: The Author As A Brand
And how to use your brand on social media to connect with readers
This session will cover the essentials of author branding, book marketing, and using social media. Run by Anna Caig and Sheila M. Averbuch - two writers and marketing professionals - the workshop will look at tools for exploring and pinning down your author brand, the version of you you’ll share with potential readers, in an authentic way which banishes the cringe.
We’ll also cover the practicalities of how to share your brand, and the content themes that come from this, on social media. As we know, ‘here’s my book, buy my book’ doesn’t cut it - so what can you talk about, and how can you create effective content?
We'll look at:
How to develop an authentic personal brand which reflects your passions and inspirations, including the development of content themes (what to talk about on your social media and other marketing channels)
An understanding of marketing strategy – a clear structure to follow to find readers who’ll love your work
Support to find confidence in your marketing and banish the cringe factor
Learn “what buttons to push” on social media: content creation practical tips and advice
Your Workshop Leaders
Anna Caig trains creative people to do their own marketing. She works with The Society of Authors, Jericho Writers and The Literary Consultancy, as well as one-to-one with many writers. She’s worked in communications for over 20 years, specialising in media relations and strategic marketing campaigns, and is an experienced and engaging public speaker.
Anna also writes historical crime fiction and her debut novel was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger prize. She reviews books for The Sheffield Telegraph and on her blog.
The former Head of Communications at Sheffield City Council and tutor on The University of Sheffield MA Journalism course, Anna began her training business to support writers to build their brand and reach more readers. She now works with traditionally, indie and self-published writers, as well as helping creatives in any discipline find a wider audience.
Sheila M. Averbuch is a children's author and content strategist who works with publishing professionals to improve their digital marketing skills and confidence. As social media manager for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, one of the world's largest literary awards, she developed the content strategy which has transformed public awareness of the prize, and she teaches Publishing Scotland's newest course, Digital Marketing for Publishing Professionals. Sheila did a degree in history and literature at Harvard and a journalism master's at Stanford and later set up Ireland’s first technology news website. Her debut novel FRIEND ME is published by Scholastic Press New York.
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.
Jun
2
1:30 PM13:30
Open Mic
Do you have a fresh piece of writing ready for the world to see? Then we want your reading! Poetry, a bit of a novel or short fiction, we love it all!
There will be two in-person open mic session over the festival weekend.
Readings should be no longer than five minutes
The Open Mic will take place in the Pleasance Bar at the following times
Saturday 1st June 3pm to 3:30pm
Sunday 2nd June 1:30pm to 2pm
To join us in person, please apply here
Submission deadline is Sunday 19th May 2024.
Venue: Pleasance Bar
Free, no ticket needed.
Jun
2
1:30 PM13:30
Retellings with Joanne Harris, Lucy Holland and Shona Kinsella
OId stories and myths continue to capture our imagination.
Joanne Harris’ collection Maiden, Mother, Crone brings together her award-winning novellas A Pocketful of Crows, The Blue Salt Road and Orfeia, which reimagine traditional British folktales into a timely, relevant and powerful new stories.
In Song of the Huntress, the follow-up to her bestselling novel Sistersong, Lucy Holland puts a female warrior leader at the centre of the Wild Hunt, while Shona Kinsella’s new book The Heart of Winter is a fresh take on the story of the Cailleach, the goddess of winter in Gaelic mythology.
Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks and many short stories. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy. In 2000, her 1999 novel CHOCOLAT was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and in 2013 was awarded an MBE by the Queen.
Lucy Holland aka Lucy Hounsom has a BA Hons in English & Creative Writing and an MA in Creative Writing, both from the University of London, and four books published with Pan Macmillan. She has twelve years of bookselling experience at Waterstones Booksellers, and co-hosts the award-winning intersectional feminist podcast, ‘Breaking the Glass Slipper’.
Shona Kinsella is the author of epic fantasy, The Vessel of KalaDene series, dark Scottish fantasy Petra MacDonald and the Queen of the Fae and British Fantasy Award shortlisted industrial fantasy The Flame and the Flood as well as the non-fiction Outlander and the Real Jacobites: Scotland’s Fight for Freedom. She was editor of the British Fantasy Society’s fiction publication BFS Horizons for four years and is now Chair of the British Fantasy Society. Shona is an avid reader with a love for language and is most often to be found with her nose in a book. She has worked in varied industries, from acting to the civil service, and has a degree in law from the University of Strathclyde.
This event will be chaired by Katalina Watt.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Jun
2
1:45 PM13:45
Containing Multitudes with Camilla Grudova, Teika Marija Smits and Elspeth Wilson
Stories come in all shapes and sizes. Join writers Camilla Grudova, Teika Marija Smits and Elspeth Wilson as we celebrate their imagination in short fiction and poetry.
Camilla Grudova lives in Scotland where she works as an usher in an old cinema. She holds a degree in Art History and German from McGill University, Montreal. Her fiction has appeared in The White Review and Granta..Her debut collection The Doll’s Alphabet was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017. Her first novel, Children of Paradise, was published by Atlantic Books in July 2022 and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Granta named her one their Best Young British Novelists list. Her short story collection The Coiled Serpent was published by Atlantic to critical acclaim in November 2023.
Teika Marija Smits is a UK-based writer, freelance editor and mother-of-two. Her poetry, short fiction and non-fiction have been widely published. Teika was formerly the managing editor of Mother’s Milk Books and is now an Editor-at-Large at Valley Press alongside running The Book Stewards – a writers’ support site that she manages with her husband. In her spare moments she likes to doodle, draw and paint. She is delighted by the fact that ‘Teika’ means fairy tale in Latvian (she is half-Latvian; the other half is Russian). She was born in Windsor, Berkshire, in the 1970s and can still remember a time before the internet and smartphones. (In the eyes of her children, that makes her ancient!)
Follow Teika on X at @MarijaSmits
Elspeth Wilson is a writer and poet who is interested in exploring the limitations and possibilities of the body through writing, as well as writing about joy and happiness from a marginalised perspective. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Too Hot to Sleep, is published by Written Off Publishing and was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s 2023 Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her debut novel, These Mortal Bodies, is forthcoming with Simon and Schuster in 2025. She can usually be found in or near the sea.
This event will be chaired by Lindz McLeod.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
2
2:15 PM14:15
Agent One to One
Writers will have the invaluable opportunity to talk directly to an agent from a literary agency or an editor from a SFFH publisher about their work, seek advice about any stage of the writing process, and receive direct feedback on pitches and ideas.
Meet our Agent
Caro Clarke from Portobello Literary
Meetings will be 15 minutes long, and there will be a £25 fee. For the in-person meetings, please select which Agent you’d like to speak to on booking. Please note spaces are limited.
By booking tickets for this event, you are committing to submitting your submission letter and the first 2000 words of your novel (or less) by Monday 06.05.2024
Please send your material to admin@cymerafestival.co.uk
Booking Deadline Monday 6th May 2024. Please note that our Agent One to One sessions book out very quickly.
Jun
2
3:00 PM15:00
Dune! The Musical
A memoir in song by the Earl of Caladan, trusted adviser to the Padisha Emperor and beloved troubadour-warrior, the bard Gurney Halleck.
Following the success of his work on "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" Gurney will perform hits from his back catalogue and introduce never-before-heard songs from his time among the Fremen.
Sing along with little Paul Atreides on his journey to Sietch Tabr; can he tame the worm, save the world AND get the girl?
Forget everything you know about Arrakis and get ready for Dune! The Musical
About the Performer
Dan Collins is a musician, writer and amateur clown with too much time on his hands. He enjoys reading sci-fi and telling stories.
"Imagine if Robert Smith and Clancy Brown taught an Irishman to play for tourists, but bald...and shorter"
Venue: Cabaret Bar
Running Time: 60 minutes, no break
Tickets: £10/£8 plus 50p booking fee
Jun
2
3:15 PM15:15
The Power of Books with Gareth Brown and Mark Lawrence
Books have the power to transport their reader to any place imaginable. But usually just in their imagination.
In the new books by Gareth Brown and Mark Lawrence, books show their true powers.
Gareth Brown has been writing novels since he was a teenager. Most of those books were not very good, and thankfully were never published. His first published novel - The Book of Doors - will be released in the UK (Bantam) and USA (William Morrow) in February 2024. Foreign language rights for The Book of Doors have also been sold to nearly twenty other territories including Germany. Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Hungary.
When not working or writing Gareth loves travel, barbecues, playing bass guitar and watching snooker. He also enjoys falling asleep in front of the television like an old man. Gareth lives with his wife and two Skye terriers near Edinburgh in Scotland.
Follow Gareth on X @garethjohnbrown and Instagram @garethjbrown13
Mark Lawrence was born in Urbana–Champaign, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. He went back to the US after taking a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College to work on a variety of research projects including the ‘Star Wars’ missile defence programme. Returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He says he never had any ambition to be a writer so was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight. His first trilogy, THE BROKEN EMPIRE, has been universally acclaimed as a ground-breaking work of fantasy. Following The Broken Empire is the related RED QUEEN’S WAR trilogy. THE BOOK OF THE ANCESTOR trilogy is set on a different world and is followed by the related BOOK OF THE ICE trilogy. There is also THE IMPOSSIBLE TIMES trilogy, a D&D/sci-fi work set in London in the 80s. All of these trilogies can be read in any order. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol.
Follow Mark on X @Mark__Lawrencem, on Instagram @mark___lawrence and on his facebook page MarkLawrenceBooks
This event will be chaired by Justin Lee Anderson.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
2
3:30 PM15:30
Lost in Space with R.W.W. Greene and Emily Hamilton
Things are just not going to plan for the protagonists of the new books by R.W.W. Greene and Emily Hamilton.
In Earth Retrogade, the sequel to R.W.W. Greene’s novel Mercury Rising, Brooklyn Lamontagne doesn't remember saving the world eight years ago, but he's been paying for it ever since. The conquered Earth governments don't trust him, the Average Joe can't make up their mind, but they all agree that Brooklyn should stay in space. Now, he's just about covering his bills with junk-food runs to Venus and transporting horny honeymooners to Tycho aboard his aging spaceship, the Victory. When a pal asks for a ride to Mars, Brooklyn lands in a solar system's worth of espionage, backroom alliances, ancient treasures and secret plots while encountering a navigation system that just wants to be loved...
In Emily Hamilton’s debut The Stars Too Fondly , Cleo and her friends really, truly didn't mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship's missing captain, Billie.
Rob Greene, who writes as the search-engine friendly “R.W.W. Greene,” is a recovering journalist and high-school English teacher. He writes science-fiction novels and short stories in a little house in southern New Hampshire where he lives with spouse Brenda, cat Jack, and a hive or two of honeybees. Greene is the author of four books -- The Light Years, Twenty-Five to Life, Mercury Rising, and Earth Retrograde -- all from from Angry Robot Books. He keeps a website at www.rwwgreene.com.
Emily Hamilton is a science fiction author who writes about women kissing in space. Her debut novel, The Stars Too Fondly, is forthcoming from Harper Voyager (US) and Gollancz (UK) in June 2024. She is also an award-winning staff writer at the alt-weekly newspaper Seven Days. She lives in Burlington, Vermont with her wife and their tiny dog Mimi.
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £5 digital ticket.
Jun
2
3:30 PM15:30
Defying Expectations with Rosie Hewlett, Ioanna Papadopoulou and Alex Penland
The Greek goddess of the Harvest, one of Greek mythology's most notorious women and a young girl set to make her own way in a world reserved for men - meet three protagonists defying societies, and your, expectations!
Having secured a First Class Honours degree in Classical Literature and Civilisation at the University of Birmingham, Rosie Hewlett has studied Greek mythology in depth and is passionate about unearthing strong female voices within the classical world. Her self-published debut novel, Medusa, won the Rubery Book of the Year award in 2021. Medea is her first traditionally published book.
Ionna Papadopoulou is a Greek by descent and Scottish by residence author. Other than writing, she is passionate about art history and museology. She has been published at Hexagon Magazine, Idle Ink, Piker Press and The Future Fire. Ioanna’s novel, Winter Harvest, was published by Ghost Orchid Press in November 2023.
Follow Ionna on X and Instagram @IoannaP_Author and on Bluesky ay ioannapauthor.bsky.social
Alex Penland is a former museum kid - they spent their childhood running rampant through the Smithsonian Institution. Alex has worked in the field with NASA scientists, linguists and acclaimed photographers and is a Pushcart-nominated author. They currently live in Scotland while studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Their short stories have been published in Interzone, Metaphorosis and beyond.
This event will be chaired by Zebib K Abraham.
About the event
Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing
Venue: Pleasance Upper Hall
Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.
Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.
Jun
2
4:30 PM16:30
A Rose Appears: Test Phase
A shadowy organisation hires three scientists to experiment with an extra-terrestrial element which might hold the key to teleportation. When one of them is unexpectedly killed by the machine, it is up to her colleagues to solve the puzzle – or face the consequences of failure. Their employer demands more human testing, but will their consciences allow it? And what will they discover if they continue to tug at the curtain of the known universe?
As the research progresses, essential boundaries - between knowledge and faith, reality and delusion, reason and instinct - become terrifyingly thin.
This work-in-progress storytelling event provides a first look at an original sci-fi horror story by Dave Robb (The Devil in the Belfry), directed by Flavia D’Avila (The Devil in the Belfry, The Rotting Hart).
Content warnings: references to mental illness, violence, discriminatory language, drug use.
Jun
2
5:00 PM17:00
Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms
Join us for this amateur production of Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms adapted for stage by Stephen Briggs.
Scarcely a year on from the events of Guards! Guards!, the Ankh-Morpork City Night Watch find their services are once more needed to tackle a threat to their city. A threat at least as deadly as a 60-foot dragon, but mechanical and heartless to boot. It kills without compunction. It is the first gun on the Discworld.
The original Watch - Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, Corporal Carrot and Corporal Nobbs - are joined by some new recruits, selected to reflect the city's ethnic make-up - Lance-Constable Cuddy (a dwarf), Detritus (a troll) and Angua (a w..., well, best to find out for yourself)..
Brought to the stage by Edinburgh-based company Strawmoddie Theatre
Venue: Theatre
Running Time: approx 2 hours 30 minutes including interval
Performance dates and times
Thursday 30th May: 7:30pm
Friday 31st Maty: 8:30pm
Saturday 1st June: 8:30pm
Sunday 2nd June: 5pm
Please note that the venue has unreserved seating. Please arrive in good time to secure seats.
Jun
2
5:00 PM17:00
Unleashing Chaos with Jane Flett and Kelly Link
Prepare to have your quiet existence interrupted by authors Jane Flett and Kelly Link.
In Kelly Link’s debut novel The Book of Love, supernatural beings and chaos descend on the small seaside town of Lovesend, Massachusetts, in the wake of the unexpected return of three missing teenagers. Laura, Daniel and Mo disappeared without trace a year ago.
Meanwhile in Jane Flett’s debut novel Freakslaw, a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem comes to the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw.
Jane Flett is a Scottish writer based in Berlin. Her fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio 4, featured in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and awarded the New Orleans Writing Residency. Her poetry features in the Best British Poetry and received the Berlin Senate Award for non-German literature. She is represented by Marina de Pass of the Soho Agency and her debut novel Freakslaw is forthcoming from Doubleday (Penguin Random House) in June 2024.
Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, Get in Trouble, and White Cat, Black Dog. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She was a 2018 MacArthur Fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She is the owner of Book Moon, an independent bookshop in Easthampton, MA.
Link was born in Miami, Florida. She currently lives with her family, dog, and chickens in Northampton, Massachusetts.
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £6 digital ticket.
Jun
2
6:30 PM18:30
Cassandra Clare in conversation with V.E. Schwab
We are excited to welcome bestselling author Cassandra Clare to talk about her latest creation, Sword Catcher.
A boy lives to protect his Prince with his life. A girl is destined to return lost magic to the world. A Prince must choose between his heart and his duty. And thrumming beneath it all, the heartbeat of a city unlike any other. Welcome to Castellane.
Cassandra will be in conversation with fellow writer V.E. Schwab.
Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Teheran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent a month living in her father’s backpack. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old.
Since her family moved around so much she found familiarity in books and went everywhere with a book under her arm. She spent her high school years in Los Angeles where she used to write stories to amuse her classmates, including an epic novel called “The Beautiful Cassandra” based on a Jane Austen short story of the same name (and which later inspired her current pen name).
After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids where she reported on Brad and Angelina’s world travels and Britney Spears’ wardrobe malfunctions. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favourite city. She turned to writing fantasy fiction full time in 2006 and hopes never to have to write about Paris Hilton again.
Cassie’s first professional writing sale was a short story called “The Girl’s Guide to Defeating the Dark Lord” in a Baen anthology of humor fantasy. Cassie hates working at home alone because she always gets distracted by reality TV shows and the antics of her cats, so she usually sets out to write in local coffee shops and restaurants. She likes to work in the company of her friends, who see that she sticks to her deadlines.
City of Bones was her first novel.
VICTORIA “V. E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the acclaimed Shades of Magic series, the Villains series, the Cassidy Blake series and the international bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Her work has received critical acclaim, translated into over two dozen languages, and optioned for television and film. First Kill – a YA vampire series based on Schwab’s short story of the same name – is currently in the works at Netflix with Emma Roberts’ Belletrist Productions producing. When not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters.
About the event
Running time: 60 minutes
Price: £5.50 - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in Zoom Webinar.
A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.
Joining us at the Pleasance? We will be showing the digital events on a big TV in the Music Room. Free with a weekend pass, or please purchase a £6 digital ticket.