Aye Write returned for 2022 with a live programme of over 200 events held across three weekends, 6-22 May. We are approaching the final ichapter of literature, discussion and debate. Check out our recommended events to book your tickets.
Sarah Pinborough, Harriet Tyce and Dominic Nolan – Nailing Biting Thrillers
Saturday 21 May
If you like a thriller that will keep you up at night, turning ‘just one more page’ – these are the books for you.
From Sarah Pinborough, best-selling author of the recent Netflix hit Behind Her Eyes, comes Insomnia – In the dead of night, madness lies…Emma can’t sleep. It’s been like this since her big 4-0 started getting closer. Her mother stopped sleeping just before her 40th birthday too. She went mad and did the unthinkable because of it. Is that what’s happening to Emma?
Edinburgh baorn barrister Harriet Tyce returns with It Ends at Midnight – It’s New Year’s Eve and the stage is set for a lavish party in one of Edinburgh’s best postcodes. It’s a moment for old friends to set the past to rights – and move on. The night sky is alive with fireworks and the champagne is flowing. But the celebration fails to materialise. Midnight approaches and the countdown begins – but it seems one of the guests doesn’t want a resolution – they want revenge.
Dominic Nolan’s Vine Street is set in Soho in 1935.The narrow alleys are brimming with jazz bars, bookies, blackshirts, ponces and tarts so when a body is found above the Windmill Club, detectives are content to dismiss the case as just another young woman who topped herself early. But Geats – a good man prepared to be a bad one if it keeps the worst of them at bay – knows the dark seams of the city. Working with his former partner, mercenary Flying Squad sergeant Mark Cassar, Geats obsessively dedicates himself to finding a warped killer – a decision that will reverberate for a lifetime and transform both men in ways they could never expect.
Otto English and Kathleen Wyatt – Pants on Fire
Saturday 21 May
These two authors should help you to tell the truth from the many, many lies we’ve been told.
In his fascinating new book Fake History, journalist and author Otto English takes ten great lies from history and shows how our present continues to be manipulated by the fabrications of the past.
He looks at how so much of what we take to be historical fact is, in fact, fiction. From the myths of WW2 to the adventures of Columbus, and from the self-serving legends of ‘great men’ to the origins of curry – fake history is everywhere and used ever more to impact our modern world.
Setting out to redress the balance, English tears apart the lies propagated by politicians and think tanks, the grand narratives spun by populists and the media, the stories on your friend’s Facebook feed and the tales you were told in childhood. And, in doing so, reclaims the truth from those who have perverted it.
In a time of deep fakes, alternative truths and leaked secrets, it would be easy to think that we are surrounded by lies. How do we do this extraordinary thing – often under the most ordinary of circumstances? How do we convince each other to suspend disbelief? Do we really tell more lies today? And considering her own lies, can she even be trusted on this subject?
In her brilliant, wide-ranging study of lies and lying, The Social Superpower, Wyatt introduces us to a cast of professionals and professional liars – from scientists to investigators, from double agents to toddler specialists, from a fallen titan of industry to a Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist. Together, they all help her prove a remarkable thesis: lies hold us together as much as they push us apart and they are vital in a healthy society.
Professor Dame Sue Black – The Books that Made Me
Saturday 21 May
Professor Dame Sue Black shares the books that have inspired, entertained and moved her over the years.
Professor Dame Sue Black is a Scottish forensic anthropologist, anatomist and academic. She is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University but it has been announced that she will move to St John’s College, Oxford later in 2022. She is also the current President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
In an incredibly distinguished career, she has work for the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United Nations, she had tours in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Grenada and Iraq and she participated in the United Kingdom’s contribution to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami international response.
Sue has attended the festival a couple of times with her own marvellous books of non-fiction, but will be joining us this time to discuss the books on her bookshelf, and bedside.
Christina Riggs – Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century
Sunday 22 May
This event will be hosted at Waterstones, Sauchiehall Street, not Glasgow Royal Concert Hall as previously advertised.
A bold new history of the young pharaoh who has as much to tell us about our world as his own.
When it was found in 1922, the 3,300-year old tomb of Tutankhamun sent shockwaves around the world, turning the boy-king into a household name overnight and kickstarting an international media obsession that endures to this day.From pop culture and politics to tourism and heritage, and from the Jazz Age to the climate crisis, it’s impossible to imagine the twentieth century without the discovery of Tutankhamun – yet so much of the story remains untold. Here, for the first time, Christina Riggs weaves compelling historical analysis with tales of lives touched by an encounter with Tutankhamun, including her own. Treasured offers a bold new history of the young pharaoh who has as much to tell us about our world as his own.
This event will be chaired by Dr. Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, and author of Golden Mummies of Egypt.