CULTURE AYE WRITE! BOOK FESTIVAL
Bee Rowlatt (far left), In Search of Mary, Andrew Lownie (above), Stalin’s Englishman and Leila Aboulela (left), The Kindness of Enemies; three of the authors appearing at Aye Write! and their books
Like all books, this festival starts with a blank page
What happens between that initial point and the final memorable event is revealed by the man putting together Aye Write!
BY BOB MCDEVITT M
y background in book events stretches back 25 years to my first job in booksell- ing in Waterstone’s
in Edinburgh in the early 1990s. Te branch that I worked in had a great track record of signings and in my
time there we welcomed an eclectic cast of characters including Michael Palin, Luke Goss (from Bros), Beryl Bainbridge, Hugh Laurie, Quentin Crisp, Leonard Nimoy and Margaret Tatcher! I then opened what was the larg-
est bookshop in the UK at the time, Waterstone’s Sauchiehall Street, and embarked on a programme of events both in the store and using external Glasgow venues such as the GFT, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and the Armadillo. Tis brought unforget- table encounters with the likes of Norman Mailer, Maeve Binchy, Stephen Fry, Ray Davies, Michael Moore, John Cale, Elaine C. Smith and Rikki Fulton.
12 | EVENTSBASE | MARCH 2016 My first involvement with the Aye
Write! festival came in 2005 when I had left bookselling to work for a publishing company. I was asked to join the steering committee for a new book festival in Glasgow and I have been involved with the team at the Mitchell Library ever since.
THOSE FIRST FEW years on the steering committee really gave me my first insight into how a book festival is put together. As a pub- lisher, I was suggesting my authors that had new or forthcoming titles to be part of panels, debates or stand-alone events. I was also able to see how the various teams of marketing, publicity and opera-
tions worked together to deliver the festival. We managed to attract some really great names to those early festivals including the actress Kathleen Turner, Antony Beevor, Germaine Greer, Andrea Levy and Edwin Morgan. As well as contributing to the
programming committee I very much enjoyed chairing events at the festival and used to look forward to my email from the then program- mer Andrew Kelly with suggestions for that year’s festival. I got to meet and interview a few heroes like Ben Watt (from Everything But Te Girl), William Boyd and Maggie O’Farrell. Te Glasgow audiences are a lively bunch and it was always interest-
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