A Chance for the Words of Three Young Writers to Shine in the Sky…
By Irene Brown – Posted on 01 November 2017
This New Year’s Day marks the beginning of the Year of Young People 2018 and today, Edinburgh’s Hogmanay launches a new competition aimed at aspiring young writers aged 8 to 18, based in Edinburgh, the Lothians, Fife and Falkirk. Their remit is to create their own short story inspired by Edinburgh, the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature.
Three stories will be selected to appear alongside a new work by celebrated Scottish writer, Val McDermid in Message from the Skies that will be launched on New Year’s Day 2018 and run until Burns Night on 25 January.
Inspired by a line from Robert Burns’ poem Sketch New Year’s Day. To Mrs Dunlop (1790) , Edinburgh’s Hogmanay and the Edinburgh International Book Festival have commissioned McDermid to write a short story entitled New Year’s Resurrection, that will be told in a series of chapters through projections onto buildings and landmarks around Edinburgh.
Bringing the story to life will involve collaboration between McDermid, Philip Howard, director and dramaturg of emergent theatre company Pearlfisher; Edinburgh based architectural projection mapping specialists Double Take Projections and three of Scotland’s finest composers and sound designers, Michael John McCarthy, Pippa Murphy and RJ McConnell.
