Margaret Elphinstone

Margaret Elphinstone was interviewed by poet and author Tom Pow at the launch of Lost People at the the CatStrand, New Galloway.
The launch event is available on YouTube.

LOST PEOPLE is published by Wild Goose. Buy it now.
Lost People Events

* Margaret Elphinstone will be talking about Lost People at the BigLit Festival on 20th July.
* Margaret Elphinstone has been invited to appear at the Wigtown Book Festival in September 2024. Date tbc.
Find out more about Lost People. Read the latest reviews.

Margaret Elphinstone is one of fifty contributors to What Winter Wants, a unique anthology of poetry published by Rymour Books. Each poet was given the three-word prompt of the title and allowed to interpret it in any way they chose. Each poet then nominated another to continue the process resulting in this impressive collaborative collection, compiled by Douglas Thompson. The book is available from the publisher's website, priced £11.99. ISBN 9781739480134

Margaret Elphinstone features on Shepherd's Books, a website that provides guides to the best reads. See her selection of the best books on Northern Lands and Shepherd's report on The Sea Road.

"The wave came at Michaelmas with a full moon and a spring tide. After that our land was soured and we knew. Now I shut the door and say to the dog ‘Last time.’..." A short story of our times from Margaret Elphinstone, published in Bella Caledonia.

Visit Shepherd's "Best Books for..." website to see Margaret Elphinstone's selection of Best Books for Northern Lands.

"Terns' Eggs", Margaret Elphinstone's poetic lament for Scotland's lost seabirds is published in Bella Caledonia.

Beth Whitelaw has interviewed Margaret Elphinstone about her writing, particularly in the time of Covid, and her fascination with life on islands and the Viking period. Read more at Ringwood Publishing.

In Requiem Erasmus, published in Bella Caledonia, Margaret Elphinstone recalls the rich experience of Erasmus student encounters and laments the severing of British ties with Europe's student community.

Dark Mountain has re-issued Margaret Elphinstone's article The Miniscus Moment. Its reflections on coping with the tipping point of collapsing civilisations are even more relevant in 2021 than on first publication in 2013.

Margaret Elphinstone's The Gathering Night is featured in a Waterstone's "Armchair Travel" podcast which invites writers to recommend books "which take the reader on a journey". Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie has selected Margaret Elphinstone's ambitious novel which is set some 10,000 years ago in Mesolithic Scotland, describing it as not only a journey through Scotland but also a journey back in time. You can hear from Kathleen in her podcast.

Margaret Elphinstone has contributed the chapter ‘Voices From the Silence’ to A Necessary Fiction, a textbook on "researching the archaeological past through imagined narratives" edited by Robert Witcher & Daniel Van Helden and published by Routledge, London.

Margaret Elphinstone's essay "Barricades" reporting from the XR autumn protest in London appears in Bella Caledonia

"Ideology feels like reality when you live inside it. It' s 'normal' for those of us who live in the Global North to operate inside a culture which is on a suicidal collision course with the needs of the planet." Margaret Elphinstone's essay, Rewilding Who We Are has been published in Refuge: Ten Years on the Mountain by Dark Mountain.

"All my life it’s been normal to see trees, hedgerows, marshlands, peatlands, shorelines bulldozed into oblivion, one habitat after another rendered uninhabitable to millions of living beings. It’s happening now, in this glen where I live, and its surrounding hills, while I sit here writing. I’m trying to write about life, and even as the words hit the page, they form an elegy. I don’t want elegy, I want celebration." Find out more about Margaret's article, The Lie of the Land, in the latest edition of Kosmos.

Read Margaret Elphinstone's The Tree that Danced , a celebration and lament for trees she has known, in Bella Caledonia.

Margaret Elphinstone's TED talk is now available on line.
In her talk, Margaret looks at how our technological inventiveness has outstripped our social and psychological development. We cannot handle the world we have created. Her talk seeks lessons from our distant ancestors who knew they must listen to the Earth and the Animals. We must rediscover and apply their skills if we are to survive. She argues that the arts have a crucial role in creating contemporary narratives addressing our predicament and offering alternative visions.