Join Bernie McGill, Claire Savage and Margot McCuaig as they explore the ways in which landscape – particularly the North Antrim coast, Rathlin Island and its surrounding areas – presents a power and an influence in creative writing.

Margot McCuaig is a storyteller and published novelist. She writes, produces and directs award-winning documentary feature films. She also makes live television programmes as a producer and executive producer. She’s a mother and grandmother, sitting at the centre of an amazing family, and she lives in Glasgow, Scotland and Rathlin Island, Ireland; a beautiful city and an inspirational island.

Claire Savage published her debut children’s novel, Magical Masquerade, in April 2017, officially launching it at the Belfast Book Festival in June. Chosen as one of Lagan Online’s 12NOW (New Original Writers) for 2016/17, Claire also writes short stories and poetry, with various work published in literary journals. Claire has just received a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s National Lottery funding as part of its Support for Individual Artists Programme (under the General Arts Award Scheme). This will support her in her artistic production and promotion, drafting a second novel, and creating a support structure for the first.

Bernie McGill’s first novel, The Butterfly Cabinet, was published in 2010 and her short story collection, Sleepwalkers, by Whittrick Press in 2013. Her short fiction has been anthologised in The Long Gaze Back, The Glass Shore and, more recently, in Female Lines (all by New Island Books). Her new novel, The Watch House, published by Tinder Press, is set on Rathlin Island at the end of the nineteenth century. It tells the story of islander Nuala Byrne, a woman caught between the apparent security of a traditional island life and the promise of a new world of technology. When Marconi’s engineers arrive on the island with their mysterious equipment that can reputedly steal a person’s words away from them and transmit them through the air to the other side of the sea, Nuala’s world changes forever.

*This panel discussion will be immediately followed by readings from Causeway Coast members of Women Aloud NI to celebrate International Women’s Day (1.30pm-3pm). This event is coordinated by – and includes – writer Jane Talbot, author of The Faerie Thorn & Other Stories.

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