Social Media for Writers

Opportunities and new directions 2025

with Elle Nash and Lindsay Johnstone

Friday 4 April 2025, 2pm - online - registration required - free

In this event, two of Scotland’s leading writers will explore the current landscape and opportunities for writers in social media, and will give us their insights into how to make the most of those opportunities and to use social media as a means of reaching new audiences for your work.

Registration is free, and is required for this event using the Eventbrite link above.

Our Speakers -

Elle Nash - In recent years, Elle's social media presence has been one of the most consistently engaging by a writer, and extends to the common social media platforms as well in the emerging opportunities for writers on SubStack.

Elle started her career as an unagented writer, and will detail how she used social media to connect with her audience, and her approach as to how to build an author platform even when you are not yet published.

Elle Nash is the author of Deliver Me (Verve Press), long-listed for the Saltire Society Best Fiction Book of the Year 2024, as well as Gag Reflex (Clash Books), Animals Eat Each Other (404ink), and Nudes (404ink). Upon publication of Animals Eat Each Other in the UK, Elle appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to speak about sex, death, and feminism in literature. Her work appears in Guernica, Adroit, BOMB Magazine, Literary Hub, Cosmopolitan, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Glasgow and can be found online at ellenash.net.

Lindsay Johnstone - is a Substack Bestselling life writer and creative writing mentor. Her reviews of poetry and memoir can be read in Glasgow Review of Books. She is the author of one memoir – Held in Mind – about breaking the cycle of intergenerational maternal trauma and is currently working on a narrative non-fiction book on premature perimenopause. She is represented by Caro Clarke at Portobello Literary.

Lindsay has built successful, engaged and growing communities on both Instagram and Substack. She has leveraged the features of both platforms to find her audience and foster meaningful connections with other writers as well as readers. Lindsay will share the value of nurturing and speaking with rather than to your followers and subscribers when building a career as a writer where a consistent online presence is essential.

Lindsay is one of the writers on Arvon’s inaugural Advanced Writing Programme for 2024-26 and is a judge on the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Awards 2025. She won the John Byrne Award in 2023 with an excerpt from her memoir, was shortlisted for the Writers’ Award at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival in 2022 with another excerpt and was supported by ASLA and Creative Scotland’s emerging writers’ programme, Our Voices, in 2021.

She launched her Substack Bestselling publication, ‘What Now? with Lindsay Johnstone, in February 2023. Her publication is currently charting 39th globally in the Parenting category and two of her recent articles achieved the global #1 most-read post.

Lindsay has been a regular voice and face on BBC news, comment and lifestyle programmes including Reporting Scotland, Mornings with Kaye Adams and Radio 5 Live Drive, discussing issues pertaining to women including parenting and education. She lives in Glasgow with her husband, two daughters and a menagerie of pets. In a former life, Lindsay was a high school teacher of English and wrote for The Herald, BBC Bitesize and BBC Learning Zone. She also founded Garnethill Women’s Collective with Denise Mina, Daniela Nardini and others.

https://lindsayjohnstone.substack.com/about

This event is presented by emergents digital in association with Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
Hosted by Peter Urpeth, founder, Emegrents Digital.