Film festival

THE acclaimed Glasgow Youth Film Festival has its 2018 run between September 14 and 16 at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) in Rose Street. Programmed by young people, it will feature films old and new, from Superbad to Skate Kitchen and Never Goin’ Back. The Opening Gala will be Anna and the Apocalypse, followed by a Q+A with members of the cast and crew, while the Closing Gala, at Blythswood Hall, will be Richard Linklater’s School of Rock.

* https://glasgowfilm.org/what-we-do/festivals/glasgow-youth-film-festival

Darvel concert

THE award-winning Scottish group Skerryvore will cap the 2018 series of concerts staged by Darvel Music Company with a show on St Andrew’s Day.

Twice winners of Scotland’s Traditional Music ‘Live Act of the Year’ Award, in 2011 and 2016, Skerryvore, which was formed in 2005, have created a notable fusion of folk, trad, rock and Americana. Overseas, their career includes performances in New York’s Central Park, the Ryder Cup golf event in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Shanghai Expo in China.

Skerryvore have also played Darvel on numerous occasions over the years, and their concert on November 30 will include familiar favourites as well as tracks from their most recent album, Evo.

*http://www.darvelmusiccompany.com

Child’s play

MUSSELBURGH-based Catherine Wheels Theatre Company, one of Scotland’s best-known producers of work for children and young people, is touring its first ever production, Martha, across Scotland and northern England this autumn.

The story of friendship, for children aged four and over, was created in 1999 and the original show toured the UK and Canada before winning the 2001 Victor Award during its run at New York’s New Victory Theatre. The show also ran at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004 and was invited to perform in Australia, China and Singapore in 2008 and 2009.

It was selected for the inaugural Theatre in Schools Scotland tour in 2016, an initiative to support and develop the provision of theatre in Scots schools, and continues to tour across China.

* www.catherinewheels.co.uk

Shepherd’s writings

A COLLECTION of unpublished works by Nan Shepherd (1893-1981), the celebrated novelist, teacher and mountaineer, whose portrait graces the Royal Bank of Scotland £5 note, is to be published later this month.

Cambridge-based Galileo Publishers says the contents will be available in book form for the first time ever.

Wild Geese contains a “brilliant” short story, Descent from the Cross, as well as 12 poems and 13 prose pieces covering everything from nature writing to literary criticism.

Shepherd published three novels between 1928 and 1933 - The Quarry Wood, The Weatherhouse, and A Pass in the Grampians - and a collection of poems, In the Cairngorms.

Her reputation grew exponentially in 1977 with the belated publication of The Living Mountain, which was written in the 1940s and has come to be described as a masterpiece of nature writing.

But much of her work, including Descent from the Cross, was published only in local magazines and journals.

Some of the poems in Wild Geese were found by Charlotte Peacock while she was researching her Shepherd biography, Into the Mountain.

* Wild Geese will be published in hardback on September 20, priced at £14.99.