Scottish Writers' Centre Whose Voice Is It Anyway? with Margaret Elphinstone & Chrys Salt

Novelist Margaret Elphinstone and poet Chrys Salt will discuss the challenge of writing in the voices of other times and cultures. Does an author have to belong to the culture they want to write about? Many authors fear that if they write about people from a different tradition or ethnic group they will be guilty of ‘voice appropriation’ and seen as intruding on someone else’s heritage. But is culture a piece of turf to be ‘defended’ from outside writers?

Margaret Elphinstone is the author of eight novels, among them The Sea Road, Voyageurs and The Gathering Night, as well as short stories. Her fiction, mostly historical, spans many periods including Mesolithic Scotland, Viking Iceland and 19th century Canada. Her work is characterised by people on journeys to places on the edge – islands, frontiers – where cultures and ideas are meeting and evolving. She is a graduate of Durham University and an Emeritus Professor of Strathclyde University where she was a member of the English Studies Department for 18 years.

Chrys Salt has authored four full poetry collections, several pamphlets, and seven books for actors under the imprint of Methuen Drama. Her poem ‘The Burning’ was selected as one of the 20 Best Scottish Poems 2012. In 2013 her pamphlet collection Weaver of Grass was shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award and she received a Writers Bursary by Creative Scotland to finish her latest collection, Dancing on a Rock, while she was awarded an MBE in last year’s Honours List for Services to The Arts in Dumfries and Galloway.