XpoNorth 2022 | Writing Your Passion

The nation’s bookshelves are full of works by authors who have successfully turned their hobbies, their interests, their chosen lifestyles or their culinary flair or sporting skills into a best-selling book.

But how do you turn your passion into pages of well-crafted, highly engaging work for others to enjoy?

In this session two of Scotland’s finest writers Coinneach MacLeod - aka The Hebridean Baker - and Malachy Tallack talk to us about how they approached their subjects to produce best-selling books they go far beyond the how-to and the self-help manual to capture the imagination of readers.

The Hebridean Baker has a global social media following and, with nearly 10 million views of his recipe and lifestyle videos, Coinneach MacLeod has featured in Elle Magazine as one of Elle’s Cosy TikTok Picks. His unique style and wholesome and delicious traditional Scottish bakes have won him fans around the globe and in his book The Hebridean Baker, Coinneach shares his fabulous recipes and stories of island life, offering a true taste of Scotland’s wild and windswept Outer Hebrides – it’s all about rustic, home baking and old family favourites because, as the Hebridean Baker says, ‘Homemade is Always Best’.

Due out in early July, Mallachy Tallack’s Illuminated by Water explores the appeal of fishing, its intense joys and frustrations, the steadying effect it has, both at the water's edge and in the memory, and the contemplation of nature and landscape that comes with being an angler.

Malachy Tallack is the award-winning author of three books, most recently a novel, The Valley at the Centre of the World (Canongate, 2018). It was shortlisted for the Highland Book Prize and longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. His first book, Sixty Degrees North (2015), was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and his second, The Un-Discovered Islands (2016), was named Illustrated Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. Malachy is from Shetland, and currently lives in Stirlingshire.

Chaired by XpoNorth’s Peter Urpeth