Writing Orkney was set up as a successor to the George Mackay Brown Fellowship in 2025. Formed to encourage and promote new writing from and about Orkney, as well as to highlight and celebrate Orkney writers of the past, it continues the work of the previous organisation.
While we are updating the site, you can still find all the information about activities carried out by the George Mackay Brown Fellowship. Soon we will be adding new activities in the name of Writing Orkney.
We will launch Writing Orkney in late summer or early autumn 2026. At the same time, we will present Weathering: postcards from the storm islands, the pamphlet arising from a Writing Fellowship awarded by Arizona State University to Pam Beasant to accompany their forthcoming publication Climate Imagination.
Arizona University received funding to allow projects around the world to respond creatively to climate issues. For Orkney’s part, Pam ran two renga sessions earlier this summer, the first open to anyone, the second with Orkney Voices, along with a third session which produced a set of cinquains and a group poem on the same theme. The poems have been beautifully set out in a pamphlet, designed by Iain Ashman. Weathering: postcards from the storm islands is Pam Beasant’s contribution to Climate Imagination and will be Writing Orkney’s first publication.
Watch this space…
What we’ll be doing
We aim to publish more pamphlets and books, arising out of the work we do to support and promote local writing. The writing group Orkney Voices now comes under the umbrella of Writing Orkney. We remain a partner organisation to Orkney Library and Archive.
What we won’t be doing is setting up and hosting writing residencies. And we won’t be organising book festivals or writing festivals, at least for the time being…
Writing Orkney 