18-06-13 Noufest

The speakers on day three,Sunday 12th May.

Renowned Scottish authors Donald Smith and Jenni Caider, Dr Moira Burgess and Professor Isobel Murray will explore Mitchison's importance in Scottish history and the great influence of her writing on the literary world.

Jenni Caider
"I was invited to contribute to Noufest because of my work on Naomi Mitchison over a number of years. My biography
The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison was published in 1997, her centenary year.
"As a teenager, I was a keen reader of her fiction. I have been interested in her work and her extraordinary life ever
since, and have given many lectures on both. I made several visits to Carradale when I was researching my book
and very much look forward to a Carradale event."

Professor Isobel Murray
"Naomi Mitchison was a decisive influence in my decision to stay in Scotland and work in in arts and culture. Naomi
was someone who combined art and activism, the national and international, radicalism with intelligent passion, and
a truly feminist perspective on an overtly male Scottish world. She was prepared to feel, think and imagine all in one.
"Naomi Mitchison is a storyteller for all ages and classes, a communicator, and someone who could look into her own
soul. She has gone on influencing my life in sometimes unexpected ways, and I am very grateful for her individual,
stubborn, passionate, dissenting Scottishness, when so much of our national life was sober and grey. It is time for a
new generation to discover Naomi as a foremother and inspirer of much positive change in Scotland."
Donald Smith, Director, Scottish Storytelling Centre
"My husband and I recorded an NM In Depth in 1984, our first meeting. We were scared we'd miss her. She was 86
or 87 then, and how were we to know she'd make it till over 100? We got on well, and subsequently I asked
permission to make a selection of her short stories (although quite often they aren't very short!). She agreed and I
published Beyond this Limit: Selected Shorter Fiction of Naomi Mitchison 1986.1 found students loved it.
"Another selection followed, A Girl Must Live: Stories and Poems by Naomi Mitchison, Richard Drew, 1990, and I'm
now Editor in chief of what we call the Naomi Mitchison Library."

Moira Burgess
"I was born in Campbeltown and brought up in Machrihanish, and so Na-O-mi, as she was always referred to locally,
was a constant background presence. A teacher at school was so excited by The Bull Calves when it appeared in
1947 that he read out bits to us - not even in English class - though as green first-years we probably didn't make
much of it.
"Many years later, when I became a (very) mature PhD student, my thesis was on supernatural and mythical
elements in Mitchison's Scottish fiction, because I had become intrigued by the recurrent appearance of something
other-worldly in the work of this very rational writer.
"In 2009 I edited Mitchison's essays and journalism on Carradale for Kennedy & Boyd and wrote introductions for
their reissues of The Big House and Behold Your King. Perhaps I don't need to specify further why I jumped at the
chance to take part in Noufest!

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