Conference Schedule
Association for Scottish Literature/Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Conference 2026
‘Our three-voiced country’:
Twentieth-century cross-currents in Gaelic and other Scottish writing.
This conference will be held at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the weekend of 26–28 June 2026.
All lectures will be held in Talla Dhonaidh Chaimbeil at Àrainn Chaluim Chille.
Evening entertainment will be held in An Talla Mòr, Àrainn Ostaig.
All the lectures will be delivered in English, although Gaelic examples may be cited.
FRIDAY EVENING
18:00 Optional Buffet
19:15 Opening of Conference (David Goldie and Gillian Munro)
Celtic Revival
- 19:30: Contacts between Gaelic and Scots in Twentieth Century Gaelic Magazines (Petra Poncarová)
- 20:00: Dread and Revelation in Dòmhnall Mac na Ceàrdaich’s short stories (Aonghas MacLeòid)
Scottish Renaissance
- 20:30: The Crosbie illustrations for Sorley MacLean’s Dàin do Eimhir, and their wider contexts (Plenary: Murdo Macdonald)
22:00 Bar Open (An Talla Mòr, Àrainn Ostaig)
SATURDAY
Scottish Renaissance
- 09:00: Dàin do Eimhir and Auntran Blads: the impact of Sorley MacLean and Douglas Young in 1943 (Emma Dymock)
- 09:30: Contexts, texts and resistance: MacLean, Garioch and MacDiarmid (Alan Riach)
- 10:00: A woman of many parts – the tripartite influence of Scotland’s languages in the poetry of Helen B. Cruickshank (1886–1975) (Elaine Morrison)
- 10:30: Shifting Perspectives: Scots and English in Nan Shepherd’s novels (John Corbett)
11:00 COFFEE/TEA
- 11:30: ‘The Deeds of the Dead Remain’: Joseph MacLeod’s ‘Open Letter to the Countess of Sutherland’ (Nigel Leask)
Creativity and Identity
- 12:00: A Light in the Dark: Lighthouses, Language, and the Afterlives of Walter Scott’s Lighthouse Yacht Journal (1814) (Hilary Clydesdale)
- 12:30: The Bilingual Basis of Creativity (Donald S. Murray)
13:00 LUNCH
- 14:00: The literary qualities of a Scots township poet – Billy Henderson (John Howieson)
- 14:30: ‘Strange in His Foreign Tongue’: language and identity in Simon Taylor’s Mortimer’s Deep (1992) (Smilla Steiner)
Iain Crichton Smith
- 15:00: Cultural hybridity and ageing: the representation of older women across Iain Crichton Smith/Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn’s Gaelic and English works (Gabrielle Fath)
15:30 COFFEE/TEA
- 16.00: The Shape of Seeing: Colour, Shape and Moral Vision in Iain Crichton Smith’s Work (Plenary: Kevin MacNeil)
17:00 END OF SATURDAY’S TALKS
- 18:30 Book launch and drinks reception (John Corbett)
Hugh MacDiarmid 1923–2023: Visions and Revisions, edited by Camille Manfredi, Fiona Paterson and Philippe Laplace
19:30 Conference Dinner and Ceilidh
SUNDAY
Mixed Media
- 09:30: Intermedial Polyphony and the Twentieth-century Makar: Margaret Tait and the Cross-currents of Poetic Hybridity (Anne Ciecko)
- 10:00: Three Voices, Living Archives: Gaelic Presence and Cultural Translation in Twentieth-century Scotland (Catherine MacPhee and Sorcha Dallas)
10:30 COFFEE/TEA
Translation
- 11:00: Gaelic Poetry in Chinese (Daisy, Li Li)
- 11:30: Negotiating the contact zone: the politics of translation in contemporary Scottish Gaelic literature (Anne Morrison)
Round Table
- 12:00: Round table on Scots and Gaelic language development (Discussion led by John Hodgart and Boyd Robertson)
13:00 END OF CONFERENCE
Optional Buffet