Scotlands Secret Sappho: Ashley Douglas and Josie Duncan

Our Friday headline event celebrates Scotlands rediscovered sixteenth-century Sappho Marie Maitland through both book and song.

Ashley Douglas will share the extraordinary story behind Maitlands secret lesbian love poetry, told for the first time in her groundbreaking historical biography, With My Own Hand: The Secret Life of Marie Maitland .

Shell be joined by award-winning singer-songwriterJosie Duncan who will perform new songs inspired by Maitlands life on harp and guitar.The youngest of the Maitland siblings, Marie had watched her elder sisters be married off one by one, destined to take up the unavoidable path for women in sixteenth-century Scotland.

However, as she neared marrying age, her father, an influential judge, poet and Keeper of the Privy Seal under Mary, Queen of Scots, went blind and suddenly needed someone to act as his scribe and secretary.

In taking up this role, Marie indeed avoided the unavoidable, dedicating her life to her father's work.

After his death, she put the finishing touches on the Maitland Quarto, long recognised as significant for its preservation of the poetry of the male great-and-good of sixteenth-century Scotland.Hidden in the pages of the Maitland Quarto, historian and translator Ashley Douglas discovered Marie's own secret lesbian love poetry.

Building on that discovery, in With My Own Hand , Douglas draws on a vast range of newly unearthed primary historical records to tell the fascinating story of Marie and her manuscript, in full, for the very first time.Ashley Douglas is a Scottish historian, translator and author, specialising in LGBT+ history and the Scots language.

Her publications include The Lass and The Quine (2025), which is the first LGBT+ inclusive children's book in Scots, as well as With My Own Hand (Hachette, 2026).

Ashley has worked with a range of national heritage, literary and educational organisations, including the National Library of Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, Time for Inclusive Education , and Scottish National Galleries .

She has also been engaged as historical consultant for two of the plays in Rona Munros acclaimed The James Plays series.Josie Duncanis an award-winning singer, songwriter and composer from the Outer Hebridean Isle of Lewis.

Steeped in the language, stories and songs of her island home, she brings a rare authenticity and emotional depth to contemporary folk music, with a voice described as intensely beautiful (FATEA).

Awarded the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award in 2017, Josie writes and performs in both English and Gaelic, weaving together timeless melodies and intimate lyrics.

Her acclaimed New Voices commission for Celtic Connections in 2021 led to a debut album of self-penned songs, and she has since performed at major festivals across the UK and internationally.