100,ooo Reasons To Join Us

We have the huge pleasure of hosting the wonderful Cynthia Rogerson, a Californian Scottish writer living in the Highlands, winner of the V.S.Pritchett Prize and holder of a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship.

Cynthia will be launching her latest book '100,000 Birthdays' at the St Duthac Book and Arts Festival on Wednesday 10th September 2025 from 7.30 p.m. "This book celebrates every fragile, fleeting heartbeat in the grand tapestry of existence".

Cynthia has published a memoir, five novels and a collection of short stories and has supervised on the Edinburgh University Creative Writing program.

Click here to book. Her 8th book, 100,000 Birthdays, is published in autumn 2025. www.cynthiarogerson.org. From the cosmic sneeze that birthed the universe to the microscopic marvel that was Kevin,100,000 Birthdays is a dazzling exploration of the improbable, chaotic, and wondrous journey of life itself.

Through wit, whimsy and the grand sweep of science, Rogerson traces the absurd yet miraculous lineage that leads to us all. Alongside musings on asteroids, carbon’s quiet supremacy and the serendipity of tortoiseshell glasses rediscovered, she invites readers to reflect on life’s strangeness, brevity, and unexpected beauty.

Part memoir, part philosophical musing, and part ode to the universe, 100,000 Birthdays will leave you marvelling at the interconnectedness of all things—and profoundly grateful to Kevin.

For fans of Bill Bryson, Carl Sagan, Elizabeth Strout and anyone who has ever wondered how on earth they got here.100,000 Birthdays is a major feat of the imagination – a unique and a thought-provoking read - S.G. MacLean (The Bookseller of Inverness, Waterstone’s Book of the Year)

A wonderful book, highly original, often profound, very funny and written with so much heart- Doug Johnstone (The Space Between Us - dramatized on BBC)

Joyful, exuberant, outrageously audacious, Cynthia Rogerson’s genre-busting new work is a beautiful exercise in wonder. This is a book that ponders the wild improbability of any human existence. Not quite a memoir, not quite a novel, almost but not quite science and spanning whole eons of existence in a series of well-crafted chapters, 100,000 Birthdays will make your head spin. It will also make you laugh, which is a rare joy these days.- Stephen May (Life! Death! Prizes! - Costa shortlisted)