Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026!

Well, 2025 was a busy year for us. After just about recovering from their journey to Baltimore to take part in the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival in 2024 we started ;ast year with lots of planning and scheduling.

We kicked things off in May, with another Baltimore connection when Alex Zavistovich from the Edgar Allan Poe Theatre asked us if we would join them in their annual Doomsday event. Doomsday is a 24hr readathon of Poe’s works and we would be the first Scottish company to participate so of course, we said ‘Aye, we’ll have a go at that!’ Our lovely friends at the Seahorse Bookstore in Ardrossan gave us access to their space so that we could live stream our readathon and made sure we were looked after. After a fair bit of planning, we had lots of lovely foklk volunteer to read some Poe for us during the day, including the well kent face of Gavin Mitchell, aka Boaby the barman from Still Game. Our very own Steven and Neil made an appearance on That’s TV Ayrshir to promote the event - they both look awfy braw on the telly. with the help of our fabulous pal, Kat Harrison from Break A Leg Academy, we got everything set up and began our 24 hr marathon reading. Everyone was fresh faced and excited and all was going well. Everyone who too part seemed to be enjoying themselves and it was great to see so many people joining us on the live stream on our You Tube channel and on Tik Tok. Steven, Neil , Kat and i braced ourselves fro the long night ahead as we prepared to cover the 9pm to 9am slot with jus tthe 4 of us. All was going well until around 4.30am when someone might have dosed off, on ca,era, whilst reading ( mentioning no names ), slight hysteria bagn to set in but we plowed on regardless. Thankfully we made it to the end and completed the 24hrs., much to everyone;s relief. Needless to say, we’re gluttons for punishment and are planning to do it all over again this year, so if anyone wants to come and join us drop me email at firreballjools@hotmail.com with Doomsday in the title.

We quickly moved on to organising a Poe, Pie and Prosecco evening at the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine. Our friend, Enrica Jang who is the Executive Director at Poe Baltimore and the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum was hotfooting over from the States for a visit and to join us to give a fascinating talk on Poe’s mysterious and tragic end, after being found delirious and dying on the streets of Baltimore. We were also joined by Scottish crime writer and Poe expert, Allan Martin, for a question and answer session with Enrica. Everyone had a great night and I think we all learned a bit more about Poe’s early life in Scotland. The pies and prosecco went down a storm too!

To top the night off, Enrica had a surpirse for us. We were awarded the very first Regional Saturday Visiter Award. . This was totally unexpected but we are absolutely thrilled to receive it. The Saturday Visiter Awards are presented by Poe Baltimore to recognize a new generation of artists continuing Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy in the arts and literature around the world. The prizes celebrate media, art, performance and writing that adapts or is inspired by Poe’s life and works.

Onto our annual Ravenfest 500 Word Short Story Competition. This is the 5th year of the competition and it just gets better ever year. We’ve had stories from all over Scotland, America and Belgium. We also welcomed 3 new Schools to the Under 18 category this year, with stories from Grange Academy in Kilmarnock, Prestwick Academy and Auchenharvie Academy in Stevenston. With so many fabulous stories, it gets harder each year to pick a winner. This year we couldn’t split the top two stories in the Over 18’s category, it was just too close to call so we awarded joint first to A Splash of Red by Jenna Laird (Scotland) and Taps Aff an Undead by Dave Melde (U.S.A.). In the Under 18’s, our winner was Insatiable by Adam Gilchrist with our runner up being Counting Sheep by Anthony Parker.

In between all that, we continue to try and secure funding for our company and we even managed to get a blue heritge plaque tp Edgar Allan Poe installed at Irvien Old Parish Church hall. Its next to the plaque for John Galt, if you go looking for it! Many thanks to Jill McColl, Hertiage and cultural Officer at North Ayrshire Heritage Centre for all her help in making this happen.

We have lots planned for this year o keep an eye on our upcoming events page for more details and hope to see you all soon!

Have fun poe-ple!

Joolsx