2020: The pandemic sent us online.
Covid clipped our wings! We had to rethink what a Book Festival with no face-to-face sessions might look like. And learn how to use Zoom with a large audience. Russell undertook that task, while Martin and Alison Munro managed to engineer (literally) an interview with Jackie Kay online for our audience.
The Historical walk, based on the book Colinton’s Local Characters, was videoed and placed on the website. Metaphrog showed how they worked on their graphic books in a skillful online session.
The major effort went into a Community Writing Project in which three paid leaders collected local writing online, featuring “threads” of Landscape, Community Wishes for the Future and the Experience of People of Colour in our area. All the writing was published online during the year and a lively session on Zoom in Book Week Scotland allowed each thread-leader to showcase a selection of writers from their thread. A further selection was presented in a four-page spread in the February C&B News in early 2021.
At the end of the Festival Russell Salton stepped down for a year and Alison Munro and Gill Marriott resigned from the committee.
Pentlands Book Festival: 6 Nov - 3 Dec 2025 