CILIPS24 Keynote: Sara Sheridan and Eleanor Thom in Conversation

Sara Sheridan is a writer and activist with a particular interest in female history, who has written more than 20 books (and counting!). Amongst many other honours, she has received a Scottish Library Award, been shortlisted for the Saltire Awards and the Wilbur Smith Prize, and her 2022 novel 'The Fair Botanists' was chosen as Waterstones’ Scottish Book of the Year. Sara also contributes to the sector by mentoring fledgling writers and she has sat on the board of several writers’ organisations.
Eleanor Thom is a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction whose work often focuses on migration, social history and remembrance. Her first novel 'The Tin-Kin', about three generations of Scottish Travellers, won the New Writing Ventures Award for Fiction and the Saltire First Book of the Year Award, with Eleanor also being featured on TV’S The Culture Show as one of the year’s best new novelists. Eleanor’s second novel, 'Connective Tissue', based on the life of her grandmother, a Holocaust refugee from Berlin, was published by Taproot Press in 2023, and she is one of the Genesis Jewish Book Week’s Emerging Writers for non-fiction. For five years, Eleanor has also been the Community Writer in Residence for The Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Citizen Project recording and presenting the stories of people living and working in the city.