Organisers have hailed the first Inverness Book Festival as a highly successful and popular event.

Over the last four days over thirty events were held at venues in Eden Court and in bookshops and libraries around the city.  Highlights included an opening night appearance by Inverness’s Booker-prize nominated author Ali Smith along with poet Jackie Kay and novelist Toby Litt and a very special evening when internationally renown authors Iain Banks and Christopher Brookmyre held an entertaining talk, reading and question and answer session that included previews of their latest novels.

There were also events for children and on Saturday over 200 Under 10s and their parents enjoyed meeting Katie Morag and her author Mairi Hedderwick whilst 50 Under 5s made masks and learned all about Hamish the Cow and his illustrator and writer Natalie Russell.

Eden Court Director, Colin Marr, said that they were delighted with the way event had gone:

“It’s been a lot of hard work, but the buzz in all parts of Eden Court over the last four days has been well worth it” he said. “Now we will sit down with all of our partners to discuss the future of the festival and our plans for next year”

The Inverness Book Festival was the result of collaboration between Eden Court and Festival Director Jason Rose. Jason, a dedicated book fan felt the city needed an event where people could meet and hear authors and simply relish books.  The festival also enjoyed support from an unprecedented partnership between the five bookshops in Inverness, Waterstone’s, WH Smith, Ottakar’s, Borders and Charles Leakey Booksellers.

Commenting on the book festival, Director Jason Rose said he hoped a sequel would follow next year.

We are delighted with the reaction by the people of Inverness to the festival.  It has been a fantastic four days.  Now all the hard work is over we are going to assess the event and, in the best tradition of books, to be continued…” 10 October 2004