Writing the North is a year-long project designed to bring together literary historians, museum professionals, schools and creative writers of Orkney and Shetland. Our project will give exciting oral, visual and imaginative contexts for the written word.

The islands of Orkney and Shetland have a vibrant community of poets and novelists at work today and Writing the North will explore continuities between their writing and the history of Northern Islands literature. We will be recovering the work of some forgotten writers, showing new aspects of well-known ones, and bringing past and present writing together to inspire new work.

The book Archipelagos, commissioned by Writing the North, draws this new work, together with associated commentary from each of the collaborative academic specialists and an introductory essay by Penny Fielding and Mark Smith. A downloadable version of Archipelagos is available here.