Girvan Arts FestivalLocal Author Showcase 2024 |
Girvan Arts Festival hosted a group of local authors at the first ever Go Girvan Christmas Market this year, chatting to readers about their work and signing books for Christmas shoppers.
There was a real breadth of work on show, from Helen Humphries and William Allan McMillan’s wonderful poetry anthologies (and William’s beautiful drawings) to Cliff McCabe’s heartwarming and funny stories of Glasgow tenement life in the sixties and seventies, Gill Sherry’s fast paced tales of glamour, blackmail and adultery in the world of premier league football, Robert Hennegan’s thought-provoking novel about relationships across the cultural divide in the Balkans, and Alan Jones’ heartbreaking trilogy charting the Holocaust in Northern Germany from 1933 to 1945.
There was a competition to win some books donated by the authors, and it was won by Linda Bruce, who is the recipient of a varied selection of literary delights.
Many thanks to Go Girvan for inviting us to do this event at their inaugural Christmas Market. We think it’s another fantastic addition to the Girvan Calendar, and we hope it goes from strength to strength.
Here are the authors who took part. Click on a book or a link to visit each author’s website or Amazon page.
Gill Sherry was born and raised in the English city of Coventry where she went on to enjoy a successful career in insurance. In 2014 she moved to the Middle East where, inspired by the exotic climate and culture, her long suppressed talent for writing began to emerge. As editor and columnist for a lifestyle magazine in Kuwait she gained a faithful following of readers across the Gulf region. Now living in Scotland, she continues to entertain her Middle Eastern followers as well as those closer to home in Ayrshire. Her first novel, Serious Foul Play, was published in 2020 followed by the sequel, A Serious Dilemma, in 2023.
Born in Cumnock in 1959, Allan attended Glasgow School of Art, and was a Principal Teacher of Art for 21 years, and a Tutor at Auchinleck Adults Community Art Group for a further 20 years.
He published Stars and Fireflies in 2017, A Sunfall of Rainshine in 2020, and Drawings and Poems in 2023.
Allan is currently working on 52 poems in 52 weeks.
Allan is a Painter and Poet who is inspired mainly by nature; the changing light and the Scottish landscapes of Ayrshire, Argyll and The Hebrides. Working mainly in pen & ink, pastel and oils, Allan’s style ranges from the naturalistic to the semi-abstract.
Ten’s a Crowd is Cliff McCabe’s compelling series of novels about the McCallister family. With Mum, Dad and eight kids to feed, life in the Glasgow of the Seventies, was never going to be easy for the clan McCallister. They were short of money, overcrowded and had to rely on second-hand furniture and an outside toilet. But despite their lack of material possessions it was a happy home, full of love and laughter (and a few tears). Based on McCabe’s own upbringing on the south side of Glasgow, the Ten’s a Crowd series has become a real favourite.
Helen DW Humphries was born and educated in Scotland. She attended Dalziel High School, Motherwell and received her MA from the University of Aberdeen. She left to teach Creative Writing at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, where she fell in love, and stayed for some years. She returned to Bath, Somerset, where her son was born.
Helen has always been a traveller, spiritually and geographically. She has lived in the UK, the USA, Sweden, Austria, Germany and Ireland. She has returned to Girvan, on the South West coast of Scotland in the hope of further inspiration …
Dr Tom Smith, local author and former Ballantrae GP, has over a number of years written a series of humorous novels about his working life. His varied medical career not only included being a GP, he has also written and had published several health books, written for numerous medical journals and newspapers and made TV and radio appearances. Until 2019 he appeared regularly on BBC Radio Scotland’s Morning Call show, giving medical advice on a wide range of health issues.
Derek Hall was born and raised in east London, attending the same school as Alfred Hitchcock. He has County Cork, Huguenot and Northumbrian ancestry.
He now lives in Maidens, on the windswept west coast of Scotland with his Renaissance wife, a Welsh cob and three ponds.
Crossed Lives is Hall’s first novel written under the pen name of Robert Hennegan.
He has also authored and edited over a dozen non-fiction books, including Brexit and Tourism and Albania and the Albanians, most of which are concerned with Central and Eastern Europe.
Alan Jones is the pen name of Alan Jeans, retired Girvan Vet, RNLI coxswain and co-organiser of the Girvan Arts Festival. He is a Scottish author with three gritty crime stories to his name, the first two set in Glasgow, the third one based in London. He has now switched genres, and his WW2 trilogy was published in the second half of 2021. It is a Holocaust story set in Northern Germany about two very different but closely connected German families that has won a raft of ‘Read of the Year’ awards from prominent book bloggers, and poignant reviews from the daughters of two Holocaust survivors.
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