I’m delighted to let you know that Wind&Bones - the organisation I co-direct - has successfully been awarded a grant from Creative Scotland for Tâigael Sounds! This is literature, but in audio form. Through this funding, we will work to produce accessible and widely available high-quality audio recordings of the stories featured in our upcoming book Tâigael.

Tâigael is a first-of-its-kind collaborative writing and translation project, bringing together writers from Scotland and Taiwan, to explore language, translation and culture. These four stories by Elissa Hunter-Dorans (Scotland), Kiú-kiong 玖芎 (Taiwan), Lisa MacDonald (Scotland) and Naomi Sím (Taiwan) cross between languages and cultures to speak of things unspoken, and to find new and surprising connections.

Taiwanese (Tâi-gí) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) are languages that have been historically marginalised and suppressed. Tâigael presents two newly commissioned short stories in Gaelic, and two in Taiwanese, or Tâi-gí. And then it translates these stories between the two languages, via Mandarin and English. Each story is included in all four languages in the book and now in audio form too, to allow the largest possible audience!

We’ll host the recordings on our dedicated project websiteand will include a QR code in the book to take you straight there…

An elderly prophet, and an attack on a subway train somewhere in Taiwan. A sheep tangled up in brambles by the roadside. A goddess of saliva who disappears without a trace. A sinister figure stalks through the darkness of the night in heavy boots, while somewhere, a fiddle plays… Four writers, four stories, and four languages, bringing together the cultures of Scotland and Taiwan.

Thank you so much to Creative Scotland for supporting this important project, and thank you to the Scottish Connections Fund for supporting the initial book idea.