Cat Hepburn, Chris McQueer and Nadine Aisha Jassat: Young Scottish Voices panel

In this Book Week Scotland special, Nadine Aisha Jassat, Chris McQueer and Cat Hepburn take to the stage to showcase their writing and share how young people can use their voices and experiences in writing and storytelling.

Cat Hepburn is an award-winning scriptwriter and spoken word artist who has written for stage, screen and page. Her poetry has been featured on BBC 6 Music, ITV and the Edinburgh Fringe. Chris McQueer is a writer from Glasgow. He has written two collections of short stories, Hings and HWFG. Hings was recently adapted as a short series for BBC Scotland and won the 2018 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. Nadine Aisha Jassat is an award-winning writer and author of poetry collection Let Me Tell You This, shortlisted for a Scottish Herald Award for Outstanding Literature.

Pupils at Smithycroft Secondary interviewed Chris, Nadine and Cat after this event and created a podcast in partnership with the BBC Scotland Learning team. Listen to the podcast on BBC Sounds.(this link will open in a new window)

If you only do one thing...

We know time is tight so here is just one activity you could do with your class before or after watching the event.

Storyboard a poem or story (LIT 4-20a, EXA 4-03a)

Ask the pupils to pick a poem or short story – either one in the broadcast, or one they can access in the classroom – and storyboard it. Ask them to divide a piece of paper into different squares and fill each one with the different images or ideas that come into their heads when they hear the poem or story read aloud.

This idea is adapted from our performance poetry activities, see below for the full resource.