1 TODAY’S International Women’s Day and to mark the occasion Glasgow-based author Madeleine Black (pictured below) will be sharing her own experience of violence. She hopes that sharing her story will help other victims of sexual violence and crime. She will be speaking on Tuesday evening at Pollok Library and Leisure Centre in Glasgow. In her book Unbroken: One Woman’s Journey to Rebuild a Life Shattered by Violence, Madeleine tells her deeply moving and empowering story about how she recovered from adversity.

2 MORE than 50 years after his death, Scottish racing legend Jim Clark continues to fascinate new generations. The newly refurbished museum dedicated to his life and successes is now staging an evocative exhibition of artworks about the former world champion, who died tragically young. Clark on Canvas at the Duns museum depicts1960s motor racing when Clark was the dominant driver. The works have been loaned by the Guild of Motoring Artists, an international group which gathers automotive art. The exhibition runs until the end of November.

3 SET sail for a weekend of salty tales and poetry and prose shaped by the sky, the sea and the land at Tighnabruaich’s brand new community-oriented book festival next weekend. Write By The Sea is centred on themes of nature and place with talks, workshops and various other events that will take place in different venues including cafes and the pier. Authors who will take part include Daniel Smith, Kate Davies, Malachy Tallack, Mandy Haggith and The Puffer Cookbook authors Mandy Hamilton, David Hawson and Nick Walker.

4 SARACEN Go Home is the title of an Edinburgh exhibition and comes from racist graffiti sprayed on a mosque in Cumbernauld in 2016. On throughout March at the City Observatory on Calton Hill, it is by Glasgow-based artist Sulaiman Majali. Saracen Go Home draws on the work of academic Gayatri Gopinath, who suggests that a diasporic position offers a way of seeing connections and stories that have been obscured in conventional histories of nations and nation-states. Sulaiman brings together a series of historical events through sculpture and sound.

5 THE similarities between Mozart and Robert Burns are explored in a new work being staged by Scottish Opera at Fochabers Public Institute on Tuesday. Amadeus & the Bard – 18th Century Cosmic Brothers is by Mary McCluskey, and celebrates the lives of the two men. Traditional Burns folk tunes are blended with music from some of Mozart’s most popular operas, such as The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, in a mix of story-telling and song, highlighting some of the surprising similarities between the two.

6 TWO Fife-based artists have made new work focused on new ways of looking at Scotland’s coast and it can be seen at Kirkcaldy Galleries this week. Kyra Clegg uses video, poetry and mixed media to present seas and coastlines which catch the murmur of other voices. In Beyond the Surface, Marysia Lachowicz visualises the powerful physicality of the sea. Abstract unpredictable images created directly in the sea, using a special photographic technique, sit alongside photographs documenting decaying coastal structures.

7 HAAF net fishing dates back to Viking times and you can learn all about it at an exhibition in Eastriggs in Dumfries and Galloway. This type of fishing was once carried out in the Solway but is now limited to the river Annan, the Nith and the river Eden in Cumbria. Haaf is the Norse word for channel (or sea) and this type of fishing has been used on the Solway since at least the time of the Viking invaders. The exhibition runs until the end of March.