The Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival with The Bakehouse presents Annette Badland in BAD BABES.

Award winning actress and ‘queen of mean’ Annette Badland - Aunt Babe in EastEnders, Margaret Blaine in Dr Who, Mrs Fitz in Outlander and Horrid Hazel in The Archers - brilliantly brings to life literature’s best bad girls from Fanny Hill to Myra Hindley, Lizzie Borden to Madame Defarge touching on everything from horror to hilarity, men to the menopause. A Festival ‘must see’.

Saturday May 21st @ 7.30pm
The Ryan Centre, Stranraer
Fairhurst Rd, Stranraer DG9 7AP

Sunday May 22nd @ 3.00pm
The Usual Place, Dumfries
Academy Street, Dumfries  DG1 1BZ

Tickets: £10.00 (£5 under 26)

Saturday 30th January

7pm for 7.30pm

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND
THE INIMITABLE HUGH MCMILLAN
Join ‘Penpont’s Pepys’ for another witty and irreverent look at contemporary Dumfries and  Galloway.
Join us for a sneak preview of McMillan’s Galloway, Tales from an Unreliable Local - due out in Easter 2016.  His Poems (Not Actually Being in Dumfries: Luath) were published recently and in the meantime a strange obsession with sheep has led to a collaboration with that other inimitable Hugh (Bryden) in a pamphlet called The Conversation of Sheep. So you know what to expect......Baaaaa!
“Hugh McMillan’s poems are special, at once local, personal and universal. Treat yourself.” So says Andrew Greig.

The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate awaits once more ...
Bring a poem, a song, (we can supply a keyboard), guitar, small pipes, BIG PIPES, a favourite Burns poem  - an entertainment either suitable or wholly unsuitable for the occasion.

Tickets £8
(includes £3.00 for hot toddies & haggis nibbles)

Saturday 3rd October  @ 6.00pm
Chrys Salt & Gerda Stevenson
Poetry Double
The Living Room

A pairing of two inspirational poets. Gerda Stevenson reads from her acclaimed collection If This Were Real, while Chrys Salt launches her fourth full collection Dancing on a Rock.
Sponsored by The Random Book Club
Tickets: £5.00
To book: Wigtown Book Festival Box Office. Tel: 01988 403222

November 26th @ 7.00 – 8.30

79-83 High St, Dumfries DG1 1BN, United Kingdom
A Waterstone’s Poetry Double:
Donald Adamson and Chrys Salt read from latest collections.

Sunday November  29th 10.30 – 1.00

A creative workshop with Professor Bashabi Fraser, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Napier University, a Royal Literary Fund Fellow based at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and Honorary Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies and the University of Edinburgh.
 
This workshop will explore how shared memories can trigger the creative moment when the personal becomes the germinal for creative expression in a public space. Bring paper and pen.
 
Cost £15.00 ( includes a light lunch)
Booking: 01557 814175 ( places are limited, first come, first served)

www.bashabifraser.co.uk

BOOK WEEK, SCOTLAND AT THE BAKEHOUSE
Saturday November 28th @ 7.30
Bashabi Fraser

Saltires 2015 Woman of the Year Professor Bashabi Fraser with hot- off -the press ‘Letters to my Mother and other Mothers’ (Luath 2015)
 
Acclaimed poet Bashabi Fraser performs poetry on the themes of motherhood, empowerment, love and loss. Drawing on her Indian and British life experience, Bashabi engages with hard-hitting current issues such as rape culture in India, climate change and war. A son questions his mother's love after she has learned about his violent deeds. The biblical Eve is shown as a liberator. A daughter of India demands justice from her society.

Saturday October 31st  @ 7.30pm

Rab Wilson writes mainly in Scots and is an active supporter and advocate of the Scots language. His work is accessible and hugely entertaining and he has, in recent years, been recognised as a major talent.  
Tickets: £5.00
To book: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 01557 814175

Sunday September 27th @7.30pm
Donald S Murray
One Head, Two Tongues

Donald S Murray, from Ness on the Isle of Lewis, writes mainly in English but often thinks and finds inspiration in Gaelic. He discusses the effect that inhabiting two languages has on his work, drawing examples from his poetry, prose and writing for the theatre.
Tickets: £5.00
To book: Wigtown Book Festival Box Office. Tel: 01988 403222

as part of the One Head, Two Tongues series
Donald Adamson Launches his latest collection
Saturday August 22nd 2015

Donald Adamson launches his new collection Glamourie (IDP 2015) – a fine collection from a poet at the height of his powers. Galloway people and places are prominent in the poems, which celebrate diversity. They embrace the ‘glamourie’ – enchantment – to be found in ordinary lives and in poetry. His poems are so firmly rooted in The Scottish landscape they appear almost self-seeded. The collection ends with wild bagpipe-led devilry, reminiscent of Robert Burns’s Tam o’Shanter, and an urgent plea for tolerance.

July 4 @ 7.30
Sheila Templeton writes in both Scots and English. A double first prize winner in both the McCash Scots Language and the Robert McLellan poetry competitions, she was also Makar of the Federation of Writers Scotland  2009 to 2010. Her two latest collections are Digging for Light New Voices Press 2011 and Tender is the North Red Squirrel Press 2013..... with a new full collection coming out next year also published by Red Squirrel.