Cosmic Crofter lands in Ullapool

Details: Created: 26 October 2025

Stylised drawing of a tractor under a starry sky. — Touching down at Ullapool Bookshop

Tales of a Cosmic Crofter, Donald S Murray’s hit new poetry collection, is set to come alive on Friday, November 7 in Ullapool.

Donald will be touching down with his poetry at Ullapool Bookshop for an afternoon of verse, imagination and highland wonder.

The event is part of the Wester Ross Dark Skies Festival and is scheduled from 2.30 pm.

Ullapool Bookshop said they were “absolutely delighted” to announce that “the legendary poet and Author Donald S Murray is coming to give a book reading at Ullapool Bookshop.”

Please note that this is a free event that is an hour-long and will be a standing event due to the limited space available.

RSVP to Ullapool Bookshop at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.if you wish to attend. A limited number of chairs will be available if required.

Meanwhile, Donald has a string of other dates lined up in the coming days:

Friday, October 31 - November 1 (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh)

“Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey” is the ensemble musical theatre piece that follows the journey of young emigrants from the Hebrides to Canada in 1923–24, blending songs, poetry and instrumental storytelling. Based on Donald’s book, The Salt and the Flame.

Get tickets.

Sunday, November 2 (Lanternhouse/Cumbernauld Theatre)

A second chance to see the critically-acclaimed “Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey” production in Cumbernauld.

Get tickets.

Thursday, November 6 - (Plockton Village Hall)

Tales of a Cosmic Crofter talk with Donald from 7 pm to 8 pm.

Friday, November 14 (Mitchell Library, Glasgow)

The Salt and the Flame at the Aye Write Festival is a broad creative exploration of the Hebridean emigration, blending readings from Donald’s novel with elements from Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey provided by musicians and Willie Campbell.

Full details and tickets.

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Donald S. Murray was raised in the Ness district of the Isle of Lewis. He spent his teenage years at The Nicolson Institute secondary school in Stornoway - in those days, pupils from rural districts stayed in school hostels in the town rather than returning home each night – before studying at the University of Glasgow in the 1980s. After receiving an MA (Joint Hons) in English and Scottish Literature, he went on to gain a Diploma in Education and a Secondary Teaching Qualification.

Since then, Donald has written an ever-growing range of books and published a wide variety of essays, columns, short stories, and poems in the likes of The Herald, The Guardian, and The Island Review. His writing, both of fiction and non-fiction, has received widespread critical acclaim and appeared on shortlists and longlists for numerous literary awards.

His debut novel, As the Women Lay Dreaming, won the Paul Torday Memorial Prize in 2020, and was shortlisted for the The Herald Scottish Culture Awards Outstanding Literature Award and the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award in 2019.

In 2015, Sequamur, Donald’s first full-length Gaelic play, was performed throughout Scotland, including at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as in Belfast, London, and Ypres in Belgium. Described as 'moving, powerful, with a message that resonates today,' it examined the effect of the First World War on the The Nicolson Institute in Stornoway.

As a native Gaelic speaker, Donald’s voice can often be heard on BBC Radio nan Gaidheal, while on BBC Radio Four he has featured on Open Book with Mariella Frostrup. He has appeared on TV, on BBC Four’s Birds Britannia, a series looking at the different birds that live in the UK, and on The Last Seabird Summer, which examined the decline of seabirds in the North Atlantic.

Donald also regularly speaks at book festivals and conferences around the world, and has delivered talks at the University of Reykjavik in Iceland; the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland; the Nordic Centre in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands; the Blasket Centre in Dingle, Ireland; and the Pisa International Book Festival in Italy, among others. In 2020, he was elected as a committee member of the Society of Authors in Scotland, which protects the rights and interest of authors.

After 30 years as an English teacher, Donald became a full-time writer in 2012. He now lives and works in Shetland.

(Updated July 27, 2021)