Alycia Pirmohamed

We’re thrilled to have award-winning poet and essayist Alycia Pirmohamed back to our festival to celebrate ‘Shorelines’ (Canongate, 2026), her Nan Shepherd Prize-winning debut work of non-fiction. This striking new book traces migration, memory, faith, race, and belonging across landscapes stretching from Canada and East Africa to the Pacific Northwest and the British Isles. Blending memoir with lyrical nature writing, ‘Shorelines’ explores hidden histories, family loss, inherited homelands, and the uneasy question of who feels welcome in the natural world. Discover a powerful, formally inventive book about how place, identity, community, and memory shape who we become across borders and generations.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born writer based in Scotland. ‘Shorelines’ (Canongate, 2026) is her first work of non-fiction, for which she won the Nan Shepherd Prize. Her debut poetry collection, ‘Another Way to Split Water’ (Polygon, 2022), was shortlisted for the Scottish Poetry Book of the Year award by the Saltire Society. She is the recipient of several other awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Alycia is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, and she currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s programme at the University of Cambridge.

David Farrier is Professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh, His books include ‘Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils’ (4th Estate, 2020) and ‘Nature's Genius: Evolution's Lessons for a Changing Planet’ (Canongate, 2025), which was shortlisted for the 2025 Wainwright Conservation Writing Prize and the Saltire Nonfiction Book of the Year.