Join us on 20th and 22nd February at this year’s Granite Noir festival!
We have a few data (£8), caregiver/childcare (£30) and travel (£50) bursaries for participants on low incomes – please email us at scottishbpocwriters@gmail.com if you will need a bursary to attend, and we’ll do our best to help.
All SBWN events will adhere to our Safer Spaces Policy. You can learn more about our policy here.
Online Masterclass
On 20th February, 6:30 pm, we’ll be hosting an online masterclass for Black writers and writers of colour, led by Katalina Watt.
Misery Made Me a Fiend: Writing the Monster
“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
For writers of all levels, this workshop will explore writing the monster as their own character, giving voice to those who are often the villains, victims, or sidelined in the narrative. We will write across horror, thriller, and crime and be inspired by monsters from classic and modern texts, as well as folklore and the writer’s own imagination. This 90-minute workshop will involve writing exercises and optional sharing with the group with a comfort break.
Tickets are £7.50 and are available from the Aberdeen Performing Arts website.
Read on below to learn more about Katalina.
Register for our masterclass
In-person Panel
We are running a giveaway to offer tickets for this event to SBWN members who may otherwise be unable to attend. Enter below.
On 22nd February, 9:00pm, at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen, we’ll be hosting a live panel discussion about all things noir with Rachelle Atalla, Tariq Ashkanani, and Nadine Matheson, chaired by Nailah King.
A Dive Into New School Crime
Grit. The City. Intrigue.
How do authors keep readers captivated and deliver heart-pounding stories that defy our expectations? This year at Granite Noir, dive into a thrilling panel that brings together brilliant authors who expertly subvert, celebrate, or redefine entirely the classic mystery and crime tropes we know and love.
Tickets are £7.50 and are available from the Aberdeen Performing Arts website here. We can’t wait to see you there!
Read on below to learn more about our speakers.
Register for Nighttime Noir in person here
Ticket Giveaway
SBWN has partnered with Granite Noir to offer a limited number of in-person tickets to Nighttime Noir to SBWN members who may otherwise be unable to attend.
Tickets will be allocated randomly to applicants. SBWN will email all applicants to let them know the outcome on 18th February.
SBWN will contact you to distribute your ticket.
To be in with a chance of receiving a free ticket, please complete this form.
The form will close at 23:59 on Monday 17th February.
Facilitator/Speakers
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Katalina Watt is an author and arts consultant with ten years experience in the book industry. They were selected for a 2025 Literature Matters Award from Royal Society of Literature, and AIR Literature 2024 Writer in Residence for Konstkollektivet in Sweden. They were a finalist for 2023 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine as founding Audio Director for khōréō.
Rachelle Atalla is a Scottish-Egyptian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter based in Glasgow. She has written for BBC Radio 4, is the recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and is the current Dr Gavin Wallace Fellow at The University of Stirling. Her debut novel The Pharmacist was shortlisted for the Scottish Fiction Book of the Year and is now in development for film with Compact Pictures and the BFI. In 2023 Rachelle’s climate-focused second novel Thirsty Animals was published, and in 2024 she published her third novel, The Salt Flats which was shortlisted for The List Rising Author Award and appeared on Radio 4’s Take Four Books programme.
Tariq Ashkanani is a solicitor based in Edinburgh, whose debut novel Welcome to Cooper was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger and won the Bloody Scotland Debut Award. He also helps run Write Gear, a company that sells high-quality notebooks for writers, and co-hosts Write Gear’s podcast Page One.
Nadine Matheson was born and raised in Deptford and now practises as a criminal defence lawyer. She won the City University Crime Writing competition, and she has an MA in Creative Writing. The Jigsaw Man was her first crime novel and was loved by readers around the world. It was shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader and the Adult Diverse Book Awards in 2022 and it has been translated into fifteen languages.