Braemar Literary Festival 2026 Speakers

A British food writer and critic, Tom Parker Bowles won the Guild of Food Writers 2010 award for his writings on British food. He is well known for his appearances as a judge and critic in numerous television food series including MasterChef and for his reviews of restaurant meals around the UK and overseas for GQ, Esquire and The Mail on Sunday. Tom is also a successful author of 8 books.

Bonnie Garmus is an American novelist whose debut novel, Lessons in Chemistry, was a number one global bestseller and spent almost ninety weeks in the Sunday Times top 10. It was named by New York Times readers as one of the top 100 books of the 21st century. Translated into forty-four languages, Lessons in Chemistry was honoured with sixteen international literary awards. Her second novel, Peck & Peck, will be published on 13th October 2026.

Jojo Moyes is a novelist and screenwriter. Her books include the bestsellers Me Before You, After You, Still Me, The One Plus One, The Giver of Stars, and Someone Else’s Shoes. Moyes’ novels have been translated into forty-six languages, hit the number one spot in twelve countries, sold over fifty-seven million copies worldwide and been Reese Witherspoon and Richard and Judy Book Club picks. Me Before You has now sold over fifteen million copies worldwide and was adapted into a major film starring Sam Claflin and Emilia Clarke.

The Maclean brothers – Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan – are three Scottish siblings who made global headlines in 2019 when they became the fastest trio to row across the Atlantic Ocean. In 2025 they rowed the Pacific Ocean, 9,750 miles from South America to Australia, setting a new Fastest Known Time and becoming the first team ever to row this route unsupported and non-stop, raising over £1 million to bring safe, clean water to more than 40,000 people.

Heather Suttie is a Glasgow-based broadcaster, publicist, producer, podcaster and event host with over 20 years’ experience connecting audiences through radio, storytelling and live events. She has presented on Heart,  Smooth and BBC Radio Scotland, and created and hosted podcasts including The Book Alchemist. Heather is also the founder of Bookface, a global community of 16,500 readers, and its popular Bookface Sip & Swap events. Through her PR agency, Violet, she develops campaigns, content and experiences for brands, authors, charities and cultural projects. Her work combines sharp editorial judgement, warmth and a strong understanding of audiences across the world.

London-based artist Celia Pym has been mending clothing since 2007. Working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, she has broad experience with stories of damage. ‘Darning is small acts of care,’ she says, ‘and paying close attention’. Pym is an Associate Lecturer in Textiles at the Royal College of Art and has published two books, On Mending: Stories of Damage and Repair (2023) and SOCKS: Imaginative Mending (2026).

Louise Welsh is the author of eleven novels, including The Cutting Room, Plague Times Trilogy, To the Dogs and The Cut Up. Welsh has received several awards and international fellowships, as well as honorary doctorates from the Open University and Edinburgh Napier University. She is also co-presenter (with Jude Barber) of the podcast, ‘Who Owns the Clyde’, Professor of Creative Writing at University of Glasgow, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Literature.

Claire Shanahan is Executive Director of the Women’s Prize Trust, whose mission is to change the world through books by women and open up pathways into reading and writing for the storytellers and booklovers of tomorrow. Named a Bookseller Rising Star in 2013, Claire worked as an editor before moving into the charity sector. A passionate advocate of the transformative power of reading and writing, she champions the ongoing need to invest in and cheerlead women.

Hugh Bonneville is a British actor and author, best known for his roles in Paddington and Downton Abbey. His children’s books include Playing Under the Piano and Rory Sparkes and the Elephant in the Room, with a sequel for the 10-year-old in all of us, Rory Sparkes and the Spy Who Loved Tea, to be published on 8th October 2026.

For more than four decades, Catherine Goodman CBE has developed a unique visual language that incorporates strongly pigmented oil paint, brushwork, oil sticks, drips and washes to create atmospheric and immersive paintings which explore both figuration and abstraction. Central to Goodman’s artistic process is the act of drawing directly from life, her intimate knowledge of the old master painters and drawing from film, where she immerses in the legends of the modern cinema age.

Val McDermid is a No. 1 bestselling author whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages and have sold over twenty million copies. She has won many awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger, the LA Times Book of the Year Award and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. Jo Sharp is Professor of Geography at the University of St Andrews with expertise in geopolitics, global health, feminism, and international development. She was named the Geographer Royal for Scotland in 2022 – the first woman to hold this title.

Lorna Elcock is a Scottish writer. She was shortlisted for Women’s Prize Discoveries in 2021 with an extract from her first novel, The Windhover, which – concerning remote youth hostels, expressionist painting, Covent Garden, birds of prey and a Glasgow family falling apart – took a good long time to write. Now she is at work on her second novel, which, again, is set in Scotland, where she’s recently returned after many years away.

Vicki Perrin is CEO of The Queen’s Reading Room, Queen Camilla’s charity dedicated to promoting and celebrating the power and benefits of reading for pleasure. Through groundbreaking neuroscience, compelling content and charity outreach partnerships in shelters and refuges, they seek to harness the transformative power of books to make life better. Formerly in TV, Radio and live events, Vicki produced the BBC’s 500 Words competition and oversaw a million stories written by children around the UK. 

Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin is an Irish writer based in Edinburgh, whose debut novel, Ordinary Saints, was published in April 2025. It won the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize, was nominated for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, and the Women’s Prize Discoveries Award.

Ali Stoner, or the ‘Roving Haggis’ as she is also known, is a highly creative Scottish cook, previous MasterChef Australia contestant and social media influencer. Born in Glasgow, she currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and family. In May 2023, Stoner launched her Instagram and presence under the Roving Haggis moniker and has seen her audience grow rapidly with a large global following, particularly in North America, Canada, Australia and of course Scotland and the UK.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is the Sunday Times-bestselling author of thirteen novels for children and adults, including The Mercies, Almost Life, The Girl of Ink & Stars, and Julia and the Shark. She has won and been shortlisted for international prizes such as the Prix Femina, Strega Prize, the Costa Book Award and the Waterstones Book of the Year. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages and optioned for stage and screen.

Zoë Strachan is an award-winning novelist who also writes short stories, plays, essays and libretti. Her most recent novel is Catch the Moments as They Fly and her current project is a work of creative non-fiction called A Very Quiet Street? co-authored with her partner, Louise Welsh. She is Professor of Creative and Interdisciplinary Practice at University of Glasgow and agrees with Muriel Spark that all writers should acquire a cat.

Chitra Ramaswamy is a British journalist, award-winning author and restaurant critic. Ramaswamy writes for The Guardian as a television critic and reviews restaurants for The Times Scotland and The Observer, alongside broadcasting for BBC radio. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy, won the Saltire Society’s First Book of the Year Award, and her second, Homelands: The History of a Friendship, about her friendship with German Jewish refugee Henry Wuga, won the Saltire Society’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year.