Acclaimed author and Edinburgh’s Makar (Poet Laureate) Michael Pedersen known for his lyrical, absorbing poetry introduces his scintillating debut novel, Muckle Flugga.
It's no ordinary existence on the rugged isle of Muckle Flugga. The elements run riot and the very rocks that shape the place begin to shift under their influence. The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and the occasional lodger to keep the wolf from the door.
Join us for an evening with Michael, one of the world’s best speakers, where he will discuss Muckle Flugga; his atmospheric, windswept and imaginative novel about familial bonds, love and yearning for connection through the complexities of grief and loneliness. Michael will be in conversation with poet, biographer, lecturer, literary scholar, Harry Ricketts.
Presented in partnership with Allen & Unwin NZ.
Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning poet and author of Boy Friends, which was a Sunday Times Critics Choice and shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish National Book Awards. His poetry collections include Play With Me (2013), Oyster (2017), and The Cat Prince: and other poems (2023). Muckle Flugga is his first novel and was published in 2025. He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and is the current Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh, and Edinburgh's Makar.
Harry Ricketts is a poet and literary scholar and has published around 35 books. He has lived in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, since 1981. Until his retirement in 2022, he was a professor in the English Programme at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His books include the internationally acclaimed The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling (1999) and Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great War (2010). Recent poetry collections include Winter Eyes (2018) and Selected Poems (2021). With historian David Kynaston, he is the co-author of Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic (Bloomsbury, 2024). His two most recent books with Te Herenga Waka University Press are the memoir First Things (2024) and the poetry collection Bonfires on the Ice (2025).