Book trust unveils children's web drive

Story from The Scotsman:

KEITH Gray, The Scotsman's teenage fiction expert and award-winning writer, is to spearhead an internet campaign to get children to read and write online.

The project, which will involve him commissioning short stories, answering teenagers' e-mails and giving tips to those entering a new creative-writing competition, is just one of several initiatives unveiled yesterday by the Scottish Book Trust in its £1.7 million programme for 2008.A new children's festival is planned for Edinburgh in March, with 19 school events and four events open to the public.

The Scottish Book Trust, which yesterday also unveiled a new logo and website, is the main agency for promoting literature, reading and writing in Scotland and it part-funds school visits by writers on a scale unmatched in the UK.

Ten new awards, each worth £2,000, for emerging writers, with a nine-month mentoring programme, will also help unpublished writers and playwrights.