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Merryn Glover
Merryn Glover was born in a former Rana palace in Kathmandu and grew up in Nepal, India and Pakistan. Her first major work was a stage play, 'The Long Way Home', which was broadcast on Radio Scotland. She has written three further radio plays for Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. In 2019, she was appointed the first Writer in Residence for the Cairngorms National Park. Merryn has published 'A House Called Askival' (Freight 2014), 'Of Stone and Sky' (Polygon 2021) and 'The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd' (Birlinn 2023), which has been shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.
Alastair McIntosh
Alastair McIntosh has been described by the BBC as 'one of the world’s leading environmental campaigners'. A pioneer of modern land reform in Scotland, he helped bring the Isle of Eigg into community ownership and negotiated the withdrawal of the world’s biggest cement company from the Isle of Harris. A Quaker with an interfaith outlook, Alastair is a founding trustee of the GalGael Trust. He is an honorary professor at the University of Glasgow, a former Honorary Fellow at New College, and a guest lecturer on nonviolence at military staff colleges. His books include 'Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power' (Aurum 2001), 'Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service' (Green Books 2015), 'Poacher’s Pilgrimage: An Island Journey' (Birlinn 2016) and 'Riders on the Storm' (Birlinn 2020, long-listed for the Wainwright Prize in Global Conservation 2021).
Alistair Moffat
Alistair Moffat was born and bred in the Scottish Borders. A former Director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Director of Programmes at Scottish Television and founder of the Borders Book Festival, he has been Rector of the University of St Andrews since 2011. He has written more than thirty books on Scottish history, including 'Islands of the Evening: Journeys to the Edge of the World' (Birlinn 2022), 'The Reivers' (Birlinn 2007), 'The Borders, Scotland: A History from Earliest Times' (Birlinn 2007) and 'To the Island of Tides' (Canongate 2019).
Richard Frazer
Rev Dr Richard Frazer has been the minister of Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh since 2003 and is one of the Church of Scotland Chaplains to the University. He founded and chairs the Grassmarket Community Project, which supports some of the city’s most vulnerable adults, and also established the Greyfriars Charteris Centre, a place for wellbeing, social enterprise and building community. Richard has a passion for pilgrimage walking and his recent book, 'Travels with a Stick' (Birlinn 2019), charts his journey on the Camino de Santiago.