Poetry and Performance

Hollie McNish is a poet and author based between Glasgow and Cambridge. She was the first poet to record at Abbey Road Studios, London and won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her poetic parenting memoir – Nobody Told Me (Little Brown, 2016) - of which The Scotsman stated “The World Needs this Book”. She has published four further collections of poetry – Papers (Greenwich Exchange, 2012), Cherry Pie (Burning Eye Books, 2015), Plum (Pan MacMillan, 2017) and Slug (Little Brown, 2021), which was a Sunday Times Bestseller. Her new book, Lobster, and other things I'm learning to love is out now (Little Brown, 2024). www.holliemcnish.com  

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet, author, scribbler, stitcher. He is currently Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh. He's unfurled two acclaimed collections of poetry with Polygon Books with a third (The Cat Prince & Other Poems) published by Corsair/Little Brown in Gorffennaf 2023 - the title poem of which is currently shortlisted for the Forward Prizes. His prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022 in the UK and North America and was a Sunday Times Critics Choice. He won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, the John Mather's Trust Rising Star of Literature Award, and was a finalist for the 2018 Writer of the Year at The Herald Scottish Culture Awards. With work anthologised by the likes of Pan MacMillan and Canongate Books, Pedersen has collaborated with musicians, film-makers, and visual artists.