Shorelines x Readers & Writers Against Genocide: A Palestine Solidarity Night

*Please note ALL tickets are contributions to the fundraiser and not redeemable as vouchers, the ticket voucher and the 'book' listing are DONATIONS to Readers & Writers Against Genocide*

'Our ancestries haunt us and it is impossible not to witness their shape-shifting griefs. I have spent a lifetime doting over the distant past, ruminating on the cartography of bodies that resemble my own but came long before mine.'

- from Shorelines by Alycia Pirmohamed

Join us to welcome Shorelines, the prize-winning non-fiction debut by Alycia Pirmohamed, into the world with a night of solidarity with Palestine.

Come on down to Bruntsfield's gorgeous Pianodrome where we will gather around readings by Alycia, Hannah Lavery and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, as well as music from Miwa Nagato and Curlew (Gill Higgins), with all proceeds from tickets and on-the-night donations going to Writers and Readers Against the Genocide. These will be distributed between two funds: Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children's Fund.

The book

As a young Muslim woman, Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous. Her affinity to the natural world – the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood – conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents’ homeland – the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees – felt painfully distant.

Across interrelated pieces that travel from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.

Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations – and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born writer based in Scotland. Shorelines is her first work of non-fiction, for which she won the Nan Shepherd Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Another Way to Split Water, was shortlisted for Scottish Poetry Book of the Year by the Saltire Society. She is the recipient of several other awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Alycia is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, and she currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s programme at the University of Cambridge.

Other performers on the night

Hannah Lavery is an award‑winning poet and playwright. She served as Edinburgh Makar from 2021–2024 and is an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Scottish Literature. Her plays include the acclaimed The Drift and Lament for Sheku Bayoh. She received the Creative Edinburgh Leadership Award for her facilitation of the Writers of Colour group and her work on Fringe of Colour’s Sorry, I Was On Mute. Her poetry collections include Blood, Salt, Spring, Unwritten Woman and Everyday, Everything (Polygon, 2026).

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson is a Swedish/Colombian writer and organiser based in Edinburgh. Her writing has appeared in publications in Sweden, the UK, US and Ireland, including Literary Hub, Wasafiri, gal-dem, Red Pepper and The Stinging Fly. She’s the author of the Desmond Elliot Prize-nominated novel How We Are Translated (2021), and the essay collection The Nerves and Their Endings: Essays on Crisis and Response (2022). She’s the Programme Director for Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair.

Miwa Nagato-Apthorp is a Singer-Songwriter based in Hawick in the Scottish Borders. Her songwriting practice draws on folk traditions to explore multicultural understandings of history, climate, gender and home. She has performed at John McCusker’s Southside of the Tracks, Celtic Connections, Edinburgh Tradfest and opened for Eddi Reader and Rachael Sermanni. Miwa was recently Musician in Residence at Alchemy Film & Arts and connecting Threads where she developed new music exploring lesser-known histories and perspectives of the Scottish Borders and beyond. Her debut EP, Noren, was released in March 2025 and she was awarded “Best Acoustic at the Scottish Alternative Music Awards.