Am Baile maps Highland authors on literary landscape.

To celebrate Scottish Literature Development Day a new feature on The Highland Council’s award winning Highland history and culture website Am Baile was launched today (Thursday 24th April) at the Town House, Inverness.

‘Literary Landscapes’ on www.ambaile.org.uk is a collaborative project between Am Baile and Highland Libraries. It uncovers authors inspired by the Highlands and was launched by award-winning novelist, poet and publisher James Robertson who features in the Literary Landscapes listings.

James Robertson said: “Books can be seen as landscapes of the imagination, but they are also extensions of the real world in which authors live. The Literary Landscapes feature of Am Baile enables people to explore these connections. It shows how the Highlands have influenced literature, and how in turn literature affects the way we view and understand the land. The fact that so many writers have taken inspiration from the Highland landscape is proof of how special and precious it is, and it's good to see this celebrated on the Am Baile website."

Also attending the launch, Councillor Bill Fernie, Chairman of The Highland Council’s Education, Culture and Sport Committee said: “Am Baile continues to maintain and develop an active interest in the heritage and history of the Highlands while supporting the development of the Gaelic language. The Literary Landscapes feature not only allows you to find out about authors but it shows you where you can find their works in our local libraries.”

Literary Landscapes is an interactive map leading to biographical information, images, sound files and bibliographies of writers inspired by the landscapes of the Highlands and Islands. It currently covers over 30 authors, past and present, from Caithness to Kintyre and from Nairn to Portree and North Uist.  It will continue to expand to include writers from Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles, Perthshire and Argyll.

The authors include poets, novelists and historians, who either live in the Highlands, come from the Highlands, write about the Highlands, or set their books in the Highlands. The entry for each author includes a booklist, with links to the Highland Libraries online catalogue.

Am Baile is a bilingual website which can be viewed in either Gaelic or English. An interactive map allows users to click on specific points to discover more about writers associated with a particular location.

A feature of Literary Landscapes is the inclusion of sound recordings which allow anyone to listen to authors reading passages from their own works. Typically this is a piece of descriptive text – it could be describing a mountain, a village, a journey, or local customs. Extracts from past authors are read by local school children and other local residents, in Gaelic or English.

Among the writers featured so far are Neil Gunn, Hugh Miller, Sir John Sinclair, Osgood Mackenzie, Clio Gray, Angus Peter Campbell, James Robertson and Katharine Stewart.

Literary Landscapes is an ongoing project and new authors will be added on a regular basis. Members of the public are being invited to contact the Am Baile team if their favourite writer is missing from the initial selection to lodge their suggestions for addition. Am Baile will include not only writers who live and work in the Highlands, but also visiting authors who may have been inspired by the landscape to produce evocative prose or poetry. Suggestions can be lodged on the website   www.ambaile.org.uk at “contact us”.