Exhibition to mark Jessie Kesson centenary

A centenary exhibition celebrating the life and work of Elgin author Jessie Kesson is to be launched later this month as part of the Spirit of Moray book festival.

Scots scriever Hamish MacDonald will be in conversation with former Moray libraries manager Alistair Campbell in a session at Elgin library on Friday, September 16 which will explore her remarkable life and writing.

Admission to the event, which is being sponsored by the National Library of Scotland, is free but booking is essential.

Jessie Kesson was born in 1916 and her early years were spent living in the wynds of Elgin which are the setting for her best-known work, The White Bird Passes. Hers was a deprived childhood but one in which she developed a great love of language and poetry.

The exhibition traces those early years and the Elgin of the time before covering her life at an orphanage in Aberdeenshire and later as a cottar wife and aspiring author, poet and radio performer before moving to London where she died in 1994.

The exhibition, which will draw on photographs, local newspaper cuttings, letters, radio scripts and Kesson’s poems, plays, novels and short stories, will remain at Elgin library for some weeks before touring other libraries across Moray.

It supports the Castle to Cathedral to Cashmere initiative which also celebrates Jessie Kesson on its website and on interpretive panels.

Moray Council area stretches from Tomintoul in the south to the shores of the Moray Firth, from Keith in the east to Forres in the west. The council and its 4,500 employees respond to the needs of 95,510 residents in this beautiful part of Scotland, which nestles between Aberdeenshire and the Highlands.

Famous for its colony of dolphins, fabulous beaches and more malt whisky distilleries than any where else in Scotland, Moray is a thriving area and a great place to live.

Headquartered in  Elgin, the administrative capital of Moray.