Scotland 2019. Student Kim Seeberg has compiled a book from translated letters depicting the brutality of the Norwegian witch trials on the arctic island of Vardø over three hundred years ago. 

Is Kim hearing voices, or are the stories of these lost women and girls the true account of those persecuted during The Witch Panic in Norway in 1662?

Vardø 1663. Ingeborg Iversdatter fights to save herself and her little sister from the stake. But Maren Olufsdatter is proud of the dark power she has inherited from her mother – at last, in a world ruled by men, Maren can have vengeance on all those who branded her a witch's get.

Written by Noelle Harrison & Becky Sweeney. Based on the novel Where the Ice Burns by Noelle Harrison, this 55-minute physical theatre show blends spoken word, film projection, music, and movement.

Throughout history, many women accused of witchcraft, accused of being in league with the Devil, have been silenced, subjugated, threatened and killed. The fear and horror surrounding witch panics created a terror with violent results.  The heritage of sensationalising women accused of witchcraft permeates through time, all the way to this day. Witch hunts still exist! The line between fantasy and truth is blurred. Did the accused really have access to magical powers? Where does the true horror in this story lie?

 About Aurora Writers

 Aurora Writers was reborn in 2016 in Edinburgh with the intention of running writing retreats and workshops in collaboration with other writers and creatives. Its previous incarnation was Aurora Theatre Company, based in Dublin in Ireland in the 1990s and founded by Noelle Harrison and Donna Ansley. During that time, the company produced four plays all of which focused on women’s stories: Northern Landscapes, Black Virgin, Runaway Wife and The Good Sister.

For Witches’ Gets, women of different generations collaborate through storytelling, performance, dance, song, animation and film-making to raise the voices of some of the women who society believed were candidates for the stake.

Running time: 70 minutes

Tickets: £10/ £8 concession

Venue: Lomond Room

Delve into the seedy underbelly of fantasy with two authors who have set their tales within the labyrinthine alleyways of fantastical cities.

Gareth Hanrahan is the author of The Gutter Prayer, the first in a new fantasy series set in the seedy underbelly of a city with dark secrets on the verge of being exposed.

Darius Hinks is an author based in Nottinghamshire whose body of work includes original fiction and tie-in fiction for the Games Workshop and Black Library. His latest novel, The Ingenious, is set in a city cast adrift in space and time, and the political exiles trapped there who must vie against the very nature of the city to escape.

Find out more about: Gareth Hanrahan and Darius Hinks!

Chaired by Cat Hellison

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Upper Hall

Who knew Horror could be so funny? Charlie Stross and Jonathan Whitelaw bring us unexpected tales from the darkest aspects of the genre.

In The Laundry Files novels, secret agents of the British Government do battle with a plethora of occult threats. In his latest novel, Charlie Stross has placed Britain under new management – one of the terrifying Elder Gods!

Jonathan Whitelaw gives the Devil his due in HellCorp. The Devil needs a holiday, and so he plans to set up a company to keep hell from freezing over while he’s gone. God agrees, but only if Lucifer solves an ancient crime first.

Find out more about: Charles Stross and Jonathan Whitelaw!

Chaired by Andrew Wilson

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/£6 concession

Venue: Lomond Room

Handel Fledermaus has travelled from the distant town of Vondorvotteimittiss, where the cabbage is king and time is sacred. A supernatural invader has plunged his once idyllic home into chaos, and he seeks the help of anyone who would believe his tale. But with a giant clock, a flying fiddler and a horde of ravenous pigs, it’s a very tall tale indeed.

Edgar Allan Poe’s comical short grows arms, legs and teeth in a fantastical and frantic monologue by Dave Robb, directed by Flavia D’Avila.

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £10/ £8 concessions

Venue: Bar

Unfortunately Zoe Gilbert is no longer able to attend this year’s festival.

The event will go ahead with Tasha Suri, who will be joined by author Micah Yongo.

Micah Yongo is the author of Lost Gods, an ancient Africa and Middle-East inspired epic fantasy and its forthcoming follow-up Pale Kings. He is a writer and videographer by trade, based in Manchester. Tasha Suri and Zoe Gilbert’s debut novels both construct fantastical new worlds from very different sources.

Tasha Suri is a London-born Librarian and fantasy novelist. Her debut novel Empire of Sand was inspired by her love of South Asian history, mythology, and period Bollywood films.

Zoe Gilbert is currently working on her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Her debut novel Folk describes a remote island community where the inhabitants are both literally and figuratively entwined with nature.

Find out more about: Zoe Gilbert and Tasha Suri!

If you would like a refund for your ticket, please let us know.

Chaired by Eleanor Pender

Running Time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Upper Hall

No matter how far humanity makes it into space, conflict, crime and darker things still will follow. Gavin Smith, Mike Cobley and S. J. Morden bring us thrilling tales far beyond the world we call home.

Gavin Smith is the author of The Bastard Legion and its sequels. 400 years from now, the Legion traipse across the galaxy from one job to the next, with the added incentive of bombs in their heads so they don’t disappoint the boss.

Mike Cobley is the author of the Humanity’s Fire series, including the latest novel Splintered Suns, a classic heist on a desert planet for a quarter of a million-year-old prize.

S.J. Morden brings us a chilling tale or murder most foul in One Way and its follow-up No Way. It is a dark tale looking at the lengths one man will go to survive and escape.

Find out more about: Gavin Smith, Mike Cobley and S. J. Morden!

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Lomond Room

Zoë Marriott is the author of several lush fantasy novels, the latest being The Hand, the Eye and the Heart, which tells the story of genderfluid protagonist Zhi and contains echoes of The Ballad of Mulan.

Natasha Ngan is the NYT bestselling author of Girls of Paper and Fire, eastern-inspired fantasy that features concubines falling in love, which is forbidden by the king.

Find out more about: Zoë Marriott and Natasha Ngan!

Chaired by Amy McCulloch

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Upper Hall

New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Samantha Shannon takes a break from her ambitious The Bone Season series with her first stand-alone novel. The Priory of the Orange Tree is sprawling epic fantasy in the traditions of J. R. R. Tolkien and G. R. R. Martin. With more dragons.

Find out more about: Samantha Shannon!

Chaired by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £10/ £8 concession

Love dragons and epic adventures? Check out the event with James Oswald on Sunday 9th June at 5pm.

Venue: Theatre

David Quantick is an Emmy-winning television writer for such shows as Veep, The Thick of It and The Day Today, as well as a writer for radio. In his new novel, All My Colors, wannabe writer Todd Millstead discovers the dark side of publishing. And it has teeth.

Find out more about: David Quantick!

Chaired by Stuart Kelly

Runnning time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Lomond Room

Three giants of science fiction in conversation.

Ken MacLeod is a prolific Scottish author of hard science fiction whose works include the galaxy-spanning Engines of Light and the Corporation Wars trilogies.

Gareth Powell has a varied body of work including the science fiction epic Embers of War and and its follow-up, Fleet of Knives.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is best known for his Arthur C Clarke Award winning novel, Children of Time and its recent sequel Children of Ruin. He has written numerous works across both fantasy and science fiction.

Find out more about: Ken MacLeod, Gareth Powell and Adrian Tchaikovsky!

Chaired by Joe Gordon

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £10/ £8 concession

Venue: Theatre

Join Sarah Maria Griffin, Alexandra Christo & Lesley Glaister, chaired by Eris Young, as they discuss the mythical creatures and figures in their fantasy. Sarah-Maria Griffin is the author of Spare and Found Parts, as well as Other Words for Smoke. Alexandra Christo is the author of the dark Little Mermaid retelling To Kill a Kingdom and the upcoming Into the Crooked Palace. Lesley Glaister is the author of several books, most recently the Chimera trilogy, which begins with Aphra’s Child.

Find out more about: Sarah Maria Griffin, Alexandra Christo and Lesley Glaister!

Unfortunately Sarah Maria Griffin is no longer able to attend this year’s festival. The event will go ahead with Alexandra Christo and Lesley Glaister. If you would like a refund for your ticket, please let us know.

Chaired by Eris Young

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Lomond Room

Anna Smith Spark’s Gemmell Award shortlisted debut, The Court of Broken Knives, has kicked off a stunning new grimdark fantasy saga of a decadent empire on the verge of collapse, and the dark powers the may save it. The Tower of Living and Dying continues the story of her Empire of Dust trilogy.

Peter Newman is an award-winning writer of grimdark fantasy. His debut novel, The Vagrant, was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award and won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award in 2016. His latest novel, The Deathless starts a new grimdark series of demons and their immortal hunters.

Find out more about: Anna Smith Spark and Peter Newman!

Chaired by Shona Kinsella

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Upper Hall

Delve into the rich literary landscape of classic Irish Science Fiction! In the 19th and 20th centuries, the winds of change came rushing in Ireland’s direction. Science and technology would transform everything: life, love, death, crime, war, and even history itself. In A Brilliant Void, Jack Fennell brings together fifteen darkly funny stories that illuminate this side of Irish literary history that is often overlooked.

Jack Fennell is a writer, editor, translator and researcher whose academic publications include pieces on science fiction, utopian and dystopian literature, monsters, Irish literature, and the legal philosophy of comic books. He is the author of Irish Science Fiction (2014), a contributing translator for The Short Fiction of Flann O‘Brien (2013), and a former visiting fellow at the Moore Institute in NUI Galway, Ireland.

Find out more about: Jack Fennell!

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Lomond Room

Why did the chicken cross the road? TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

The city of Aberdeen is being terrorised by giant robot chickens who want to peck out every last sign of human resistance. The streets are empty, the adults have vanished — and those left behind are fighting for survival. Jesse and his friends are desperate to save their families and stop the feathered fiends. They hatch a master plan...but can a gang of kids REALLY defeat an army of angry robot chickens?

Alex McCall grew up in Aberdeen and has degree in Filmmaking and Screenwriting from the University of the West of Scotland. He has been published in several poetry and short story anthologies, and he is the winner of the 2013 Kelpies Prize for his debut novel. Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens is his first children's book.

Find out more about: Alex McCall!

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £5 (no concession)

The ticket for this event includes admission for one child and one guardian.

Venue: Pentland Room

Modern horror is about more than just things that go bump in the night…

Louis Greenberg is an author and editor. His latest novel, Green Valley, is set in a world that has rejected modern surveillance and tracking technology, but follows a small group that still lives within the virtual reality of Green Valley.

Sarah Lotz is a screenwriter and novelist. Her latest novel sees a young man’s brush with death go viral. In The White Road, she explores the lengths we’ll go for five minutes more of fame.

D. A. Watson is a Glasgow-based writer of Horror. In his novel, In the Devil’s Name, a group of local boys find out that the local legend of the haunted cliffs is more than just a ghost story to give the tourists a thrill.

Find out more about: Louis Greenberg, Sarah Lotz and D. A. Watson!

Chaired by Jim McLeod from the #1 Horror Blog, Ginger Nuts of Horror

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Upper Hall

Why be the hero when assassination pays better? Two writers of epic fantasy discuss the genre’s favourite freelance position, the Assassin.

RJ Barker is the author of The Wounded Kingdom series (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins and King of Assassins). He lives in Leeds with his family and has also written numerous short stories and historical scripts.

Micah Yongo is the author of Lost Gods, an ancient Africa and Middle-East inspired epic fantasy and its forthcoming follow-up Pale Kings. He is a writer and videographer by trade, based in Manchester.

Find out more about: RJ Barker and Micah Yongo!

Chaired by Cat Hellisen

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Bar

Join Lauren James and Tom Pollock for all things science fiction! Lauren James is the author of The Loneliest Girl in the Universe and The Quiet at the End of the World, and Tom Pollock has written the mind bending thrillers, White Rabbit, Red Wolf and Heartstream. Come along as they discuss their books and how science fiction illustrates our dreams and fears for the future.

Find out more about: Lauren James and Tom Pollock!

Chaired by Nicole Brandon

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Theatre

Writing doesn’t always have to be about galaxy-spanning, twenty volume space operas and other longer works. Short fiction can contain whole worlds in only a few pages.

Marian Womack is a bilingual author and postgraduate researcher at the Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her writing is concerned with loss, nostalgia and nature, and these themes are explored in Lost Objects.

Oliver Langmead is an Edinburgh-born and Glasgow-based writer of science fiction. He has held a writer’s residency at the European Astronaut Centre is Cologne and is published by Unsung Stories.

Vicki Jarrett is an Edinburgh-based novelist and short fiction writer. Her first speculative fiction book will be published this summer by Unsung Stories.

Find out more about: Marian Womack, Oliver Langmead and Vicki Jarrett!

Running Time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Bar

Philip Caveney's first novel was published in 1977. Since then, he has published many novels for adults and several series for children that have sold all over the world. In addition to the Sebastian Darke series and the Alec Devlin Mysteries, he has written the Crow Boy trilogy for Fledgling Press. Philip also writes as Danny Weston and won the Scottish Book Trust Teen Award 2016 for his book, The Piper. In his most recent book The Slithers, a young boy discovers an ancient evil that lives underground…

*Please note that Dawn Finch unfortunately has had to cancel her appearance at #Cymera19. The event is going ahead with Philip Caveney. Please contact us if you’d like to request a refund for your ticket for this event.

Find out more about: Philip Caveney and Dawn Finch!

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Lomond Room

Take a dive into the darker side of fantasy…

Cameron Johnston is a Glasgow-based writer of fantasy and horror. His debut novel, The Traitor God, has been described as a dark and gripping tale set in a believable world that doesn’t shy away from its more brutal aspects. His follow-up, The God of Broken Things, will be released in June 2019.

Anna Stephens describes herself as an author of epic-y, gritty, grimdark-y fantasy. Stephens’ Godblind trilogy (so far consisting of Godblind and Darksoul) is concerned with the human relationships of her characters, who are trapped in a war between humanity and dark, bloodthirsty gods. The conclusion to her trilogy, Bloodchild, will be released later this year.

Find out more about: Cameron Johnston and Anna Stephens!

Chaired by Peter Sutton

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £8/ £6 concession

Venue: Upper Hall