Welcome to the 2012 Wigtown Book Festival

Visitors to Wigtown often get a shock when they look up: where did all those stars come from? How did we never notice they were missing where we live?

This year's festival celebrates the power of those unspolit heavens and the countryside below: from star-gazing suppers and fariy-tale walks, to the baroque fantasies of the Arabian Nights and the improbable dreams of a new generation of space explorers.

Wigtown became Scotland's National Book Town in 1997, a mecca for booklovers drawn to this beautiful part of southwest Scotland by its secondhand bookshops. In January this year, it was also designated Scotland's most creative small town in the inaugural Creative Place Awards.

We warmly invite you to share in, and add to, that sense of creative purpose. The sky's the limit.

Adrian Turpin, Festival Director