Sara Maitland and Linda Cracknell at the Robert Burns Centre

Review for Galloway paper


The Robert Burns Centre saw a welcome return to two well-kent writers in the area. Linda Cracknel, who has been involved in “Create” doing workshops in Dumfries and Galloway schools and Sara Maitland, Galloway’s own homegrown writer who grew up near Dalbeattie, she has recently returned to Galloway with her husband who is a dairy farmer.

Sara and Linda are also well- known to each other as Sara was Linda’s tutor when as a young writer she embarked on an Open College of Arts course. They also worked together again on a British Council Led project, pairing established British writers with young African writers being mentored and tutored through email.

The event last night was extremely lively and enjoyable chaired with great skill and dexterity by local writer and lecturer Tom Pow.

The evening kicked off with both writers reading from their new collections of short stories, “The searching Glance” by Linda Cracknell and Far North and Other stories by Sara Maitland. One of Sara’s stories has been turned into a major film starring Sean Bean. Sara said publishers found it prudent to advertise such facts on the front covers of books!


Each writer demonstrated a very different style; Linda’s story – “And the Sky was Full of Crows” was a densely crafted love story with tragic implications full of colourful and visual imagery .One phrase that stuck in my mind was “the glamorous colours of pheasants” She explores themes of loss and abandonment and laughingly described the stories as her “misery stories” and said that she found it hard to get away from these themes.


Sara’s story “Swans” is rooted in the Galloway landscape, in it she explores the theme of silence using the framework of the fairytale Six Swans.
Tom asked her why she used this tradition and she replied in remarkably candid way that that as she is very lazy and as these stories had worked for 2000 years in many countries it meant she knew they worked and therefore didn’t have to come up with a new one.


Tom Pow said that Linda’s influences are from a naturalistic/Checkovian line but that Sara uses sources of fairytales and myths and her work is derived from the oral tradition.
Sara summed it up succinctly; “ a short story is a poem that doesn’t have to scan and a novel that doesn’t have to bother with the characters’ psychology.”

This led to a lively and heated debate about the difference between the “Literary” short story and the short story derived from the oral tradition.
Tom Pow said that Linda’s writing influences are from a naturalistic/Checkovian line but that Sara uses sources of fairytales and myths and her work is derived from the oral tradition.

There was even advice for writers’ block, Linda favoured a practical approach; go for a walk, as walking is a meditative thing and always gives ideas, Sara was more radical and said she thought that the term was “heroic” and used just to prove that you were a writer . She thought if a writer had writers’ block they had to work out why they were in the wrong circumstances. Perhaps, for example, if they had been writing non-stop for 6 months every moment of the day, they had to have a break which would give them time to think.

The evening finished with recommendations of favourite short stories: Sara recommended:
“Blue Juice” by Margo Lanigan,
“Collected Short Stories” by GracePaley
“In the Blue Fields” by Claire Keegan.

Linda recommended: "Writing Short Stories” by Ailsa Cox and anything by either Janice Galloway or A.L. Kennedy.