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Neil M Gunn writing competition 2007

Organised by The Highland Council and the Neil M Gunn Memorial Trust this premier writing competition is open to both adult and school age writers from all over the UK.  When it was last held in 2004 it attracted a record number of entries in all age categories.

This year's junior competition was launched at Dingwall Academy, at an event attended by S3 pupils and representatives of Highland Libraries and the Neil M Gunn Trust.

Originally launched in 1988 by the former Ross and Cromarty District Council to encourage creative writing, The Highland Council picked up the baton and the competition is now one of the most prestigious events in the Scottish Literary Scene. Entry to the competition remains free for children, £5.00 per entry for adults.

 

This year the theme is "Highland Spaces" which is completely open to interpretation, whatever that means to you.  Inner space, the great outdoors, your room or home, a corner of a drawer.  It could be a beach or a wood, your garden or the multi storey car-park in Inverness.  Go for it!  Surprise us. We want to hear your ideas.

Ann Yule - Convenor of the Neil Gunn Trust and Charlotte MacArthur - Area Library Officer for Ross and Cromarty at the launch of the children's competition pictured with pupils from Dingwall Academy

Launch of the 2007 Neil Gunn Writing Competition for Adults

Members of the Neil Gunn Trust and Ross and Cromarty Reader Groups

at the launch of the adult competition

 

The first Neil Gunn Writing Competition was held in 1988 and was won by Bess Ross, who has gone on to write several books of short stories and novels; she has also written a play, which was performed by ‘The Grey Coast Theatre’. There have been many winners since then, the most famous being Michel Faber in 1997.  Others include Ian Blake from Gairloch with a marvellous poem called ‘2084’. In 2002 John McPartlin won the Poetry section and Angus Dunn the Prose section. In 2004 John McPartlin again won the Poetry prize and Peter Cameron the Prose.

All the winning entries and the DVD created by John McNaught celebrating the 2007 competition can be found on the Am Baile website at the link below

The History of the Neil Gunn Writing Competition

By Ann Yule - Convenor of the Neil Gunn Trust  (pictured below)

1987 saw the unveiling of the Neil Gunn Memorial  on Heights of Brae, Strathpeffer by Sorley Maclean (poet) and Jessie Kesson (author).  There were several reasons for choosing this particular site.  Neil Gunn lived in Brae Farm House, situated to the right of the road from Dingwall to Strathpeffer, for 12 years. During that period he wrote eleven of his twenty novels.  He did his writing in the morning, then set off in the afternoon up through the fields behind the house, crossing the Heights’ road just where the monument is situated.  There are stunning views from the Monument, both down to Dingwall, the Cromarty Firth and the Black Isle, and to the mountains of the West.  This view is described by Neil Gunn in ‘The Serpent’. 

After the ceremony on the Heights was over, the Trustees and guests retired to the Royal Hotel in Dingwall. It was there that George Finlayson, the then Convenor of Ross & Cromarty District Council announced that the Councillors had decided to organise a Neil Gunn Writing Competition every second year, on condition that the Trust would co-operate with the Council and provide a judge for each competition. The Trustees were delighted with this proposal and accepted with enthusiasm.   

When the District Council ceased to exist and Highland Council took over, my husband, Kerr Yule, (Chairman of the Neil Gunn Trust) and I had a meeting with Stuart Brownlie of Highland Council. We asked if Highland Council would be prepared to pick up the baton and undertake to run the Writing Competition in the future. This was agreed and the Competition has gone from strength to strength.  Eight competitions have been held so far, 2007 will be the ninth. 

The Competition theme this year is ‘Highland Spaces’ – I wonder what Neil Gunn would have made of that! 

I would like to encourage all interested people to ‘Have a go!’  Many of you reading this will be writers already. Being able to express yourself in words is a tremendous asset and one worth cultivating.  Molly Hunter (author), a judge in 2002, advised budding writers to try and write something every day, no matter if it was just a diary entry.  It is often said that ‘Writing is one part inspiration, nine parts perspiration!’  Certainly writing is an art and, as such, needs to be learned and worked at regularly. What works for me is to let the Theme circulate in my head; gradually ideas begin to form around it.  So don’t be afraid to enter, you never know what you might achieve. 

To give you a little bit of inspiration I would like to quote from ‘The Serpent’ when old Tom is seated at the ‘Chambered Cairn’, north/west of the Neil Gunn Monument. He is coming to the end of his life’s journey and these are the thoughts coursing through his head -

“For at the end of the day, what’s all the bother about?  Simply about human relations, about how we are to live one with another on the old earth.  That’s all, ultimately.  To understand one another, and to understand what we can about the earth, and in the process gather some peace of mind and, with luck, a little delight.”   

 Ann Yule – Convenor of the Neil Gunn Trust

More photographs can be viewed at www.caithness.org

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