Luke Winter & Glen Leslie 

- 12/8/23 @ 6pm

Luke Winter a writer, facilitator and storyteller. He is motivated by stories from everyday experience and loves helping people to share, mourn and celebrate the fantastic weirdness in what we get up to, day in, day out. Luke has worked as a street busker of spontaneous short stories, writing for strangers on a typewriter and has self-published a number of volumes of short stories, also his debut novel "Expectations Are The Thieves Of Joy."

Glen Leslie is a magical mystical mischief merchant and fine fine wordsmith poet & painter. lives outside Edinburgh.

Luke and Glen will be reading various poems and short stories!

Rob A. Mackenzie, Annie Brechin, Tessa Berring & Lady Red Ego

- 18/8/23 @6pm

Rob A. Mackenzie is from Glasgow and lives in Leith. His fourth collection Woof! Woof! Woof! was published by Salt in July 2023. His poems, articles, reviews and translations have appeared in many literary magazines. He runs Blue Diode Press.

Annie Brechin received a Jerwood/Arvon Young Poets Apprenticeship in 2003 at the age of 19. After stints living, writing and performing in Prague, Paris and Dubai, she has settled down in Edinburgh. The Mouth of Eulalie, her first full-length collection, was published by Blue Diode Press in 2022.

Tessa Berring's first collection Bitten Hair, published by Blue Diode Press in 2019, was highly commended in the Forward Poetry Awards. Her second is Folded Purse (Blue Diode Press, 2022). A pamphlet, Putty, was published by If A Leaf Falls Press in 2022.

Lady Red Ego is a Chinese and Scottish lesbian writer concerned with intimacies. Her first pamphlet, The Red Ego, was published in 2019 with Wild Pressed Books and her second, Natural Sugars, in 2020 by Broken Sleep Books. Your Turn to Speak! (Blue Diode Press, 2023) is her debut full collection .

Jane McKie, Lauren Pope, Allie Kerper & Anne-Laure Coxam - 21/8/23 @ 6pm

Jane McKie’s first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), was awarded the 2008 Sundial/Scottish Arts Council prize for best first book of 2007. A pamphlet, Jawbreaker (2021), won the Wigtown Poetry Festival’s Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize. She works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her most recent collection is Carnation Lily Lily Rose (Blue Diode Press, 2023)

Lauren Pope was raised in Los Angeles and lives in Edinburgh. Her poetry pamphlet, Announce This (Templar Poetry), was shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Awards. She is a Manchester Poetry Prize finalist and won the Brotherton Poetry Prize. Her debut collection, Always Erase, was published by Blue Diode Press in 2022.

Allie Kerper is an Edinburgh-based poet originally from the USA. She has earned too many Creative Writing degrees, most recently from the University of Glasgow. She works as an editor of university course materials designed for distance learning. Pale Hairs Reach Between Us (Blue Diode Press, 2022) is Allie’s first poetry collection.

Anne-Laure Coxam is based in Edinburgh. She is a native French speaker and writes in English. Her pamphlet Toolbox Therapy was published by Sad Press in 2016. the male and

the female poet go to the surgery in exciting times (Blue Diode Press, 2022) is her first full collection.

Amy Arnold - Lori & Joe 

- 25/8/23 @ 6pm

Amy Arnold will be reading form her new novel "Lori & Joe" published by Prototype, and chatting with Elizabeth Reeder, author of "microbursts."

Lori & Joe live in a quiet valley where one day is much like another. One morning Lori finds Joe dead. She could call an ambulance but what difference would it make? Instead she goes for a walk.

As she makes her way through the fog her thoughts slip between past & present, revealing a marriage marked by isolation, childlessness & a terrible secret.

Amy Arnold lives in Cumbria. She has degrees in Music and Psychology, and studied postgraduate Neuropsychology at Birmingham University. She’s worked as a university lecturer, teacher and swede packer. Her debut novel, Slip of a Fish, won the 2018 Northern Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize. Lori & Joe is her second novel. 

Elizabeth Reeder, originally from Chicago, now lives in Scotland. She writes fiction, narrative non-fiction and hybrid work that creates spaces between forms, subjects and disciplines. Her work explores identity, family, illness and grief, creativity and landscapes. Her latest novel, An Archive of Happiness, was published by Penned in the Margins in September 2020 and was long-listed for the Highland Book Prize. microbursts, a collaborative work between herself and the artist Amanda Thomson, was published by Prototype in 2021. She is a MacDowell Fellow and a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at University of Glasgow. Her website is: elizabethkreeder.com

Andrew McGregor

- 26/8/23 @ 6pm

In the wake of September 11th, a man who grew up with his mother in Eastern European brothels comes to New York City searching for an adventure, identity, and home. The US of A has other plans for him, though; it will give him what he wants for a price. A series of imposed quests drives our beleaguered hero through America's dark heart from New York to Boston to a Walmart on the outskirts of Atlanta where he finds and spreads damnation and salvation while working the night shift.

Author Bio

Andrew McGregor holds a liberal arts degree in philosophy and a University of Southern California master's in screenwriting. He is a global traveler who likes typewriter poetry busking and competing in events such as strongman and Highland games. He is a chessboxing champion who now referees record-setting tournaments. An accomplished accordion, duduk, and bagpipes player, he has performed on a Grammy-nominated album and in venues stretching from California to Japan. Andrew calls the USA home, often in Los Angeles, though he prefers to write at his place in Colorado.

A Conversation Between Eco-Poets - Melissa Davies & Caleb Nichols

- 28/8/23 @ 6pm

Based in the north of England, Melissa is a poet writing about both the Norwegian and Lakeland landscapes, asking who gets to speak for them and why? As well as her own creative practice, Melissa works with local communities to create collage poems which have been displayed in National Trust woodland, high street restaurants and shopping centres.

Previous poems published by Alliterati Magazine, Maybe Later Press & Oh Comely Magazine.

Melissa’s poems for Time and Time, Solstice Shorts Festival 2019, were performed at

Greenwich, Maryport, Clydebank and Lisbon and published in the Time and Tide anthology.

Melissa will be reading from The Arctic Diaries published by Arachne Press!

 The Arctic Diaries chart generations of the characters, myths and misremembered details that make up the oral traditions of a windswept archipelago in Norway’s far north. Created over a single arctic winter, using stories gathered from the last surviving fisherman of Langholmen, this collection of poems are part history, part field notes, exploring what role the outsider plays in preserving the experience of another.

Caleb Nichols is a queer poet and musician from California. His poems and prose have been published widely in places like 14 Poems, Poetry Wales, New England Review, 45th Parallel, Talkhouse, and Truthout. His Bottlecap Press chapbook “Chan “Says & Other Songs” was called “marvelously queer” by Eduardo Corral, and they have poetry pamphlets forthcoming from Gasher & Broken Sleep. A best of the net nominee, and a recipient of an Academy of American Poets University prize, Caleb is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Bangor University in North Wales. calebnicholsis.gay