Wigtown Book Festival Director, Adrian Turpin, to Step Down After 20 Years

After two decades at the heart of one of the UK’s best loved literary gatherings, Adrian Turpin is to step down as the Creative and Strategic Director of Wigtown Book Festival, following this autumn’s event. 

Adrian first worked on the festival, which takes place in Scotland’s National Book Town in Dumfries & Galloway, as a volunteer in 2006. 

During his tenure, he has overseen a programme of expansion that saw its audience grow to more than 20,000 and generating £4.2 million a year for the region. In 2017, he was awarded an OBE for services to literature and the economy of Dumfries & Galloway.

A vocal advocate for the role culture can play in defining places and bringing social and economic benefits to communities, in recent years he has played a leading role in helping the festival face the challenges of COVID 19, the cost-of-living crisis and public spending cuts. 

In November 2024, the festival won Outstanding Cultural Event or Festival at Scotland’s national event awards, The Thistles, while this January it secured a funding-deal worth £388,000 over three years from Creative Scotland. 

Wigtown became Scotland’s National Book Town in 1998 and the festival began the next year, intended as a flagship event to attract visitors, promote the region and use the power of the arts to help regenerate a rural area that was facing severe economic challenges following the closure of the local creamery and distillery.

The festival, which also organises the Wigtown Poetry Prizes and the Anne Brown Essay Prize for Scotland, has since attracted a reputation for inventive programming and intimacy. 

Bringing household literary names from across the UK to a town of under 1,000 people, it also celebrates the richness of southwest Scotland’s creative talent and heritage. 

This year’s Wigtown Book Festival runs from 26 September to 5 October. The programme will be announced in August.