The Mallaig Book Festival
                    A Write Highland Hoolie!
               6 - 8  November 2026 

Margaret Bennett

Singer, writer and folklorist

Margaret Bennett has had a lifelong interest in songs, stories and traditional culture. Originally from Skye, she grew up in a family of singers, pipers and storytellers – Gaelic on her mother’s side, and Lowland Scots on her father’s.

While she attributes her “best schooling” to sitting by her grandparents’ fireside, she studied Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland, then spent a year in Quebec recording the traditions of Highland settlers. 

A former lecturer at the School of Scottish Studies, she teaches part-time at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is an honorary teacher at the University of St Andrews. 

She is the author of 15 books, and many articles and recordings, including collaborations with her son, Martyn Bennett (1971–2005). As Hamish Henderson once said, “Margaret embodies the spirit of Scotland.”

Christopher Brookmyre

Quite Ugly One Evening

Chris Brookmyre is the author of more than thirty crime and science fiction novels, including Black Widow, which won the 2016 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the 2017 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and The Cracked Mirror, which won the 2024 McIlvanney Prize. His novels have sold more than two million copies in the UK alone.

He has also collaborated with his wife, Marisa Haetzman, to write five historical crime novels under the pseudonym Ambrose Parry, including The Way of All Flesh and The Death of Shame.

His work has been adapted for stage, television, radio and even a video game.

His latest novel is Quite Ugly One Evening, an ingenious locked-room mystery that sees the return of rogue journalist Jack Parlabane, 30 years after his appearance in Quite Ugly One Morning.

Gregory J. Kenicer

Plant Magic

Dr Gregory J. Kenicer is a botanist at Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden, where he works in the thriving education department. With a research specialism in the evolution and diversity of peas and allied species, as well as traditional plant use in Scotland, Greg is particularly enthusiastic about the learning and communication sides of botany and plant diversity.

His first book, Scottish Plant Lore: An Illustrated Flora, is a beautifully illustrated celebration of how plants have shaped Scotland’s society, culture and economy over hundreds of years. It was followed by Scottish Plant Names: An A To Z, which showcases the enormous diversity of Scotland’s native species and the country’s rich linguistic heritage. Greg’s latest book, Plant Magic: The Supernatural Side of Botany, is a fascinating exploration at the way all sorts of plants have been used in magical traditions across Europe.

Tom McClean

Adventurer

A veteran of both the Parachute Regiment and the SAS, Tom McClean is a survival expert and intrepid adventurer. In 1985, he lived on the island of Rockall from May 26 to July 4 to affirm Britain’s claim to the territory.

Following his retirement from military service, he gained fame for numerous feats of endurance. He holds the world record as the first man to row across the Atlantic from west to east solo in 1969. In 1982 he sailed across the Atlantic in the smallest boat, only to see his record broken just three weeks later. In response, Tom used a chainsaw to cut two feet off his own vessel and then made another crossing to regain the record.

Tom’s most recent feat was the construction, in 1996, of a boat shaped like a giant whale, which completed a circumnavigation of Britain. He is an entertaining storyteller, full of self-deprecating humour and warmth.

Peter Mackay

Scotland's Makar

’S ann à Leòdhas a tha Pàdraig MacAoidh, agus chaidh dà leabhar bàrdachd leis fhoillseachadh le Acair – Gu Leòr (2015) agus Nàdur De (2020) – agus pamflaid le Clutag Press, From another island (2010). ’S e àrd-ollamh aig Oilthigh Chill Rìmhinn a th’ann agus ann an 2024 chaidh ainmeachadh Makar na h-Alba.

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Peter Mackay is a poet, broadcaster, translator and lecturer. He has two collections of poetry with Acair – Galore (2015) and Some Kind of  (2020) – and a pamphlet, From another island (2010), with Clutag Press. He is a Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews and in 2024 he was appointed Scottish Makar.

Originally from the Isle of Lewis, Peter Mackay now lives in Edinburgh. A native Gaelic speaker, he is the first Gaelic poet to hold the role of Makar.

The Maclean Brothers

Three Brothers in a Boat

Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean were raised on a sense of adventure and a belief that the greatest journeys are those fuelled by purpose. They first made global headlines in 2019 when they became the fastest trio to row across the Atlantic Ocean, covering 3,000 miles from the Canaries to Antigua in 35 days and breaking the previous record by nearly a week. Determined to keep working together for causes they believed in, they founded the Maclean Foundation, with a mission to raise funds for clean water projects. In 2025 they rowed the Pacific Ocean, 9,750 miles from South America to Australia, setting a new Fastest Known Time and becoming the first team ever to row this route unsupported and non-stop. At sea for 139 days, they faced storms, seasickness, dwindling rations and even a man-overboard incident, raising over £1 million to bring safe, clean water to more than 40,000 people.

Shona MacLean

The Cromarty Library Circle

Shona MacLean was born in Inverness and grew up in the Highlands. She has a PhD in History from the University of Aberdeen and moved from a background in historical research to writing historical crime fiction.

 She is the author of both the Alexander Seaton and the Damian Seeker historical crime series under the name S.G. MacLean and has twice won the CWA Historical Dagger.

Her standalone Jacobite thriller, The Bookseller of Inverness, was Waterstones 2023 Scottish Book of the Year.

Her latest book, The Cromarty Library Circle, is a non-crime historical novel set on the Black Isle in the 1830s. Its fictional characters are members of a real-life literary society that was active in the town of Cromarty at the time, and the novel explores how they negotiate the challenges of life and their relationships with each other.

Sally Magnusson

The Shapeshifter's Daughter

Sally Magnusson is the eldest daughter of the Icelandic journalist and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson and the Scottish newspaper journalist Mamie Baird. She grew up in and around Glasgow in houses that were always filled with stories. Later, she became a newspaper reporter and then a broadcast journalist herself, delighting in fashioning other people’s experiences (and sometimes her own) into articles, programmes, books and interviews. She has presented flagship news and current affairs programmes for the BBC, authored acclaimed fiction and non-fiction books and founded the charity Playlist for Life after discovering the power of personal music for people living with dementia while caring for her mother Mamie. Her new novel, The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, is a powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel, queen of the underworld, which celebrates the joy of reclaiming our stories.

Michael Pedersen

Poet and writer

Prize-winning Scottish poet and author Michael Pedersen, who grew up in Portobello, is the current Edinburgh Makar and a former writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh.

He has published three acclaimed collections of poetry; his most recent, The Cat Prince & Other Poems, won Best Poetry at the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards.

His prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022 to rave reviews and was a Sunday Times Critics Choice.

Michael Pedersen has been shortlisted for the Forward Prizes Poetry and the Saltire Scottish National Book Awards and has won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship.

His debut novel, Muckle Flugga, was published in 2025 and has been described by Ian Rankin as “a fever dream of a book, melding myth and magic to the monumental landscape of Scotland.”

Polly Pullar

In the Company of Sheep

With over 40 years’ professional experience, Polly Pullar is a conservationist, naturalist, writer and photographer who specialises in wildlife and countryside matters and is also a wildlife rehabilitator. She contributes to a wide selection of magazines and her books include Fauna Scotica, A Richness of Martens, The Red Squirrel, A Scurry of Squirrels, A Drop in the Ocean, and a memoir, The Horizontal Oak – A Life in Nature.

In her new book, In the Company of Sheep, Polly travels the country from Dartmoor to Shetland, exploring exactly why sheep matter. She shows that, despite current ecological debates about overgrazing, with careful management, it is possible to restore habitat alongside an animal that has played a key part in British agricultural life for thousands of years.

Polly Pullar is the co-founder of A Write Highland Hoolie.

Mark Stephen

Broadcaster and producer

Since 2002, Mark Stephen has been a familiar voice to listeners of BBC Radio Scotland’s popular Out of Doors programme, which he produced for many years before turning his hand to presenting. It’s a job that has given him a broad overview of a whole range of subjects relating to Scotland, its people and the land.

Mark has also produced and presented programmes and series for BBC Radios 4 and 5 and has voiced television programmes for BBC One, Channel 4 and BBC Scotland. His work has taken him to 18 countries around the world and to four continents. He has stood in medieval rock-hewn churches in Ethiopia, chased a hippo in Malawi, visited temples and shrines in Japan and India, and lugged tranquilised lions about South Africa. He has loved nearly all of it.

Mark lives with his wife, Jean, on their smallholding in rural Aberdeenshire.

Elaine Thomson

Saltwater

Elaine Thomson has written several historical crime novels under the name E.S. Thomson.

Her work has been long-listed for the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger, and shortlisted for the Saltire Prize, the Scottish Arts Council First Book Award, and the William McIlvanney Crime Book of the Year award.

She is currently writing a quartet of ghost stories, all set in the wilds of Scotland during the four key 'turning points' of the year.

The first, Hawthorn, is set at Samhain. The second, Saltwater, is set at midsummer. Books set at Imbolc and midwinter are to follow. 

Elaine has a PhD in the social history of medicine. She works as a university lecturer by day and writes by night.

She has lived in Edinburgh for forty years and has replaced her two sons (now grown up) with two cats.