Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival — 2020 edition
We used our Creative Scotland funding to move the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival online for 2020. When it became apparent that we weren’t going to be able to welcome our usual gang of crime fiction lovers to Stirling for the weekend festival we tried to re-imagine as many of the key elements that make the festival fun for a digital platform. We were still going to have lots of brilliant crime writers — some appearing on panels and some in one-to-one conversation, that was a given but we also wanted to re-invent some of our Bloody Scotland traditions and try out a few new things.
We were still able to award The McIlvanney Prize and Bloody Scotland Debut Prize (with a new sponsor — Glencairn Glass) and the shortlisted debut authors collaborated in a short story for the first time. We still had our pub lock-in (without the pub and without any booze — sadly) when we showed some old footage from Crime in the Coos of old — and added a few new performances (some were even live on Zoom — not easy!). We still had our incredibly successful Pitch Perfect session for unpublished writers which attracted a phenomenal 600 viewers this year — try fitting that into our usual church hall venue! and we found a new way to give a platform to debut and emerging writers with our Crime in the Spotlight series which this year appeared as pre-recorded videos before our best-selling authors and panels.
So what was new? well, we had more international authors than ever before and they were joined by a more international audience with more than 20 countries represented. We also attempted the largest panel in Bloody Scotland’s ten year history with ‘A Bloody Tour of Bloody Scotland’ in which 26 authors from every corner of Scotland appeared on a one-in-one-out panel which lasted for four hours! (see picture). We couldn’t have our torchlit procession this year and most missed was the annual grudge, sorry, football match between Scotland and England — but there are limits to what you can do on the internet! A great deal of fun was had however and all credit goes to Creative Scotland for keeping us going through the year that none of us will forget in a hurry!
