Autumn Means Festival Season in Scotland’s Book Town

Tucked away in the Dumfries and Galloway region in the southwest of Scotland is Wigtown, a tiny village with one main street and a population of less than a thousand people. Today, the town houses a thriving arts scene with an impressive focus on literature. But how is it that this remote village, once a destination for coastal trade and service for farming communities, came to be the country’s official “National Book Town?”

Like many places in Scotland, settled over one thousand years ago, Wigtown has literally seen a millennium of history and change. Wigtown’s geography places it on a hill overlooking the sea at the base of the River Cree. For many of its early years, the town acted as the ferry point for crossing the tidal river, which flows from Loch Moan and empties into Wigtown Bay. It was the chief town of Galloway, and its ferry access gave it substantial commercial and strategic significance. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the local economy profited from coastal trade, fairs, and markets, creating a service centre for the farming communities in the area. But when immense industrial expansion occurred midway through the nineteenth century, the growth of rail and road networks diminished Wigtown’s trade and overall prosperity. 

Matters grew worse in the twentieth century when Wigtown lost its two key employers. The population fell rapidly, and storefronts and buildings were left vacant. The town’s loyal members knew that Wigtown needed revitalisation in the form of a new venture. The opportunity came in 1998, when Strathclyde University ran a competition to find a town in need of regeneration to fund and develop as the country's official book town. The contest was launched, and Wigtown came out the winner.

Up until then, Wigtown had only one bookshop, which had remained open by some miracle — though it allegedly contained the largest collection of second-hand books in Scotland. Today, Wigtown is home to seventeen bookshops and book-related businesses, all of which are independently owned. Each shop has its own niche, some of which include books by and about women, crime and mystery books, and second-hand books on mythology and folklore. 

Even early on in the project, it was clear that Wigtown was becoming a gathering space for book lovers, creatives, and writers alike. With the aim of bringing the community together for a shared experience each year, the town started the Wigtown Book Festival in 1998. The festival runs for just over a week from the end of September through the beginning of October annually. Over time, the festival has grown remarkably in scale, drawing huge, international audiences to hear from a wide variety of authors and literary experts.

This year the festival is running from 25 September through 4 October. As an English student and book lover myself, I was immediately compelled as I browsed through the programme. The festival boasts a truly impressive variety of speakers and quantity of events — 250 to be exact, spread across a whopping 48 pages of programme! From writing workshops to author readings to panel discussions to literary celebrities, film screenings and performances, the festival offers everything. The events run across every literary genre imaginable: life stories, family tales, Scottish fiction, witchcraft, crime, poetry — you name a theme, the festival has an event around it. This year, some of the celebrity guests include Scottish actors Bill Paterson and Sam Heughan and English actress and comedian Lucy Porter. 

If you love books and have a car (or a generous friend with a car), I am incredibly jealous, and I urge you to take the trip down to Wigtown for this year’s book festival.

Illustration by Tessa McCormick