An interactive online and offline art installation, the Love Wall showcases and celebrates the multifaceted forms love can take. 
Visit waywordfestival.com/love-wall to leave a virtual contribution or Sunnybank Park to make your mark on the physical love wall installation. 

Rumours and racism in an elite private school; Faridah describes Ace of Spades as 'a love letter to queer Black teenagers who feel powerless and alone finally finding their voices.’   

This event has limited numbers (and a waitlist). Please sign up only if you fully intend to show up, and let us know if you have to cancel so we can offer your place to someone else. Please also let us know via the form whether you have any additional needs.

There will be an optional follow-up online editing component to this workshop to be arranged with Professor Stollery via doodlepoll on the day

'Speaking of Sound': Online Sound Art Workshop with Nathan Wolek

Many people are good at listening but lack vocabularies to describe what they hear, others need help to distinguish between sounds in the world around them. Join this interactive online workshop with Professor Nathan Wolek of Stetson University, Florida, to learn about layers or specific features of the soundscape around you, and how you might speak about and take forward these impressions. Suitable for people who are visually-impaired as well as for those who are not.

What exactly is an ‘elliptical reading’ and how is it a work of art? There’s only one way to find out… 

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A screening of British Art Show 9’s Elliptical Reading by artist Abigail Reynolds, with in conversation event, followed by audience Q&A 

Alison McCall of AWA delves not only into Aberdeen's dramatic witch trials and executions, but the real people behind the stories. 

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​Discover the places and stories associated with witchcraft in the Granite City with Aberdeen Women’s Alliance’s virtual Witches Walking Tour. Screening of pre-recorded walk with live online Q&A. 

Can notions around mental health assist us with our writing? Counsellor and Creative Writer Jane Hughes explores this through workshop exercises aimed at getting you thinking and writing in a new way.  

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Places on this workshop are limited, with a waitlist. 

Decolonising the Imagination: freeing reading and writing from the legacy of Empire is a masterclass by Leila Aboulela, and welcomes anyone interested in anti-racism, Black Lives Matter and diversity, as well as writers, readers and educators who are looking for ways to enrich their practice.  

New writers on the Scottish scene and Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award-winners, novelists Rachelle Atalla, Hannah Nicholson, Gillian Shearer and poet Jen Cooper, join Wayne Price for a round table with readings of their work.

In 2020 Irvine Welsh, John King, author of The Football Factory, and Alan Warner jointly published a book of three novellas: The Seal Club. Join them for a conversation about this and much more. 

Exploring historical beliefs in the supernatural and modern-day parallels in our society, the project is a timely artistic response to the current campaigns for a pardon for and memorial to those accused in the trials. 

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In collaboration with the writer Mairi Kidd, Rachel and Lauren bring these narratives to life, with each character represented by a short story, a visual and a musical piece.   

Join us once again (after so long…) at The Blue Lamp for an extravaganza of North-East words, music and film with writers, performers and musicians, featuring Shane Strachan, Sheena Blackhall, Noon Salah Eldin, Affa Fine, SC&T Youth and Iona Fyfe.  

Young film-maker Anais Fourrier has made four Storytelling & Place short films featuring local tale-spinners and some weel kent locations, specially for WayWORD 2021. The first of these, starring North-East Makar Sheena Blackhall, will be premiered this evening, with screenings of three others to follow throughout the festival.   

Elizabeth Anderson and Timothy C. Baker lead this Life-writing Workshop, drawing on the work and writing habits of two great Scottish writers, Naomi Mitchison and Sylvia Townsend Warner, to create exercises for writing about your own life. 

Nicky Larkin's documentary Abomination follows the creation of The Belfast Ensemble's radical DUP Opera, which takes verbatim political statements and puts them to music.

Join us for an evening of performances from veteran and emerging writers published on two highly-regarded Aberdeen-based literary and arts platforms, Pushing Out the Boat and Leopard Arts  feat. Elsewhere to Be Polish Scots writing 

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From poetry to spoken word to theatre, from Scots and English to a smattering of Polish there is something truly for everyone!  

Gather together to resurrect the words of women and non-binary poets through the creation of some funky little zines. What better  to pursue our adventures in conversing with the dead? The mediums guiding your communication with the other side are two, out of the three, co-directors of Dead [Women] Poets society: Jasmine Simms (poet) and Lily Arnold (artist).  

A writing-focussed workshop led by Mae Diansangu and Hanna Louise of Aberdeen-based women & non-binary arts platform, Hysteria. Open to writers of all experience levels. 

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Places on this workshop are limited, with a waitlist. 

Philadelphia author and creator of Story Medicine, Nomi Eve, and Canadian Writer-in-residence at Aberdeen’s specialist palliative care hospital, Emily Utter, discuss their own novels and stories, and their experiences with writing in a healthcare setting. How do they write with and for people facing illness or even the end of life?   

Chris’s approach to musical participation is inclusive and he welcomes anyone onto his courses, which appeal to those who’ve wielded their instruments or voices in anger before, and also those who’ve put it off all their lives.

The idea of this workshop is to learn some popular shanties and have a go at writing a modern version that we could later perform and record.

Join British Sign Language (BSL) teacher Mags McNulty in a 1 hour BSL workshop for beginners. You will learn basic greetings, colours, and other phrases. A fingerspelling handout will be provided before the event.

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Places on this workshop are limited, with a waitlist. 

Avni Doshi, Booker-shortlisted author of Burnt Sugar, activist poet and dramatist Raman Mundair, and writer, researcher and activist Preti Taneja discuss writing across cultures and languages and share their work. 

Whether depicting toxic mother-daughter relationships, exploring the social consequences of the ‘war on terror’ or restaging King Lear in contemporary India, these writers explain how not to get lost in translation. 

Members of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) Poets group and the Scottish Writers Centre, John Bolland, Mandy Haggith & Eveline Pye make climate realities clear and present with poems that draw on biophysics, engineering, ecology, mathematics and more…    

A workshop focussing on performance technique led by Mae Diansangu and Hanna Louise of Aberdeen-based women & non-binary arts platform, Hysteria. Open to all experience levels. Participants may perform at Saturday’s Hysteria open-mic night, featuring headliner Harry Josephine Giles. 

Join award-winning poet Natalie Linh Bolderston as she discusses worldbuilding, the art of constructing an imaginary world, through a poetry lens. Bolderston will use her work as a "worldbuilding case study" and will take time to read some of her poetry. There will be time for Q&A at the end of the event.

One of four films made by young French film-maker Anais Fourrier following North-East storytellers Grace Banks, Sheena Blackhall, Pauline Cordiner and Jackie Ross around Aberdeenshire as they tell their lively tales in situ. 

Karine Polwart is a multi-award-winning songwriter, folk singer, composer, theatre-maker, and author. Join her as she shares some of her work and discusses her multidisciplinary experience in conversation with University of Aberdeen Professor of English and Scottish Literature, Tim Baker, and English and Film student Katerina Gort.  

QI’s Dan Schreiber, co-host of the UK’s most listened-to podcast No Such Thing as a Fish and producer of award-winning shows on TV and Radio, talks about the processes of writing comedy for TV and radio and answers your questions.

Finn will draw on his own experimental animation to conduct a workshop exploring the process of creation and storytelling for animation.

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Places on this workshop are limited, with a waitlist.  

Nan Shepherd’s legacy continues to live on not only through her work, but also through its reinterpretations in contemporary contexts and forms. Join writer Zakiya McKenzie and composer Colin Riley for an artistic exploration of Nan Shepherd, words, music and the natural world.

Noted for their powerful prose, acclaimed Scottish writers Ely Percy and Graeme Armstrong talk about their work and the challenges of depicting working class Scotland. 

Join Aberdeen Art Gallery's Amy Thomson and face and body painter Ulianka Maksymiuk for a collaborative event looking at paintings in Aberdeen Art Gallery to explore ideas of beauty with a panel led discussion; includes live face art demonstration and Q&A

One of four films made by young French film-maker Anais Fourrier following North-East storytellers Grace Banks, Sheena Blackhall, Pauline Cordiner and Jackie Ross around Aberdeenshire as they tell their lively tales in situ. 

What does it mean to be a nature writer in our changing climate? Join authors Jessica J. Lee and Alice Tarbuck in conversation about human-nature relationships in literature - covering topics including nature and identity, wellbeing, witchcraft, and environmental crisis.

An author event with multi-award-winning crime writer Val McDermid, introducing her latest work,1979, the first in a brand-new series of novels featuring Allie Burns.  

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Winner of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger, and many other accolades and prizes, the ‘Queen of Crime’ emerges from lockdown with new stories to tell. 

Meet Brixton Bard and acclaimed writer of young adult fiction, Alex Wheatle, and learn about his forthcoming novel, Cane Warriors, which follows the true-life slave rebellion known as Tacky’s War in 18th-century Jamaica through the eyes of one boy. 

Orcadian writer and performer Harry Josephine Giles heads up an exciting evening hosted by Hysteria Aberdeen, including performance opportunities for 'graduates' of Hysteria's 'Spoken Word Writing' and 'Spoken Word Performance Technique' Workshops for WayWORD.

Bothy Ballads are traditional folk songs from North East Scotland, historically sung by farm labourers on a huge variety of topics, encompassing history, comedy, tragedy, romance and everything in between! 

Ellie is an accomplished trad singer from Rothienorman who reached the finals of the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Award 2021. 

During lockdown Norrie kept busy by teaching Gaelic online to students from all over the world but also kept on performing through Facebook every week.

This event is brought to you in partnership with Scottish Culture and Traditions Associations’ SC&T Youth