- Announcing the Winner of the Dear Scotland Writing Competition Thank you to everyone who entered our first writing competition this year. It was genuinely thrilling to read the stories and poems as they came in and I know that the judges, Vic Galloway, Nina de la Mer, and Alistair Braidwood, had an enjoyably difficult time picking a winner.
- Dear Scotland Writing Competition: Win 50 of the Greatest Scottish Novels Next month sees the 50th edition of Indelible Ink, Dear Scotland’s monthly column on the best of Scottish writing. In an act which can only be described as impulsive, Pete Reid, Editor of Dear Scotland has just bought all 50 books featured since the first column was published four years ago. From ‘Morvern Callar’ to […]
- Indelible Ink: Leila Aboulela’s ‘The Translator’ One of the best things about reading books written in and of the country you live in is that they give you new perspectives on the familiar and everyday, making you look again at places and people you had long since taken for granted. In the last few years I have read work by English, […]
- Indelible Ink: Toni Davidson’s ‘Scar Culture’ Over the months I’ve written about some difficult and disturbing books. Duncan McLean’s ‘Bunker Man’ immediately springs to mind, but perhaps Toni Davidson’s 1999 debut novel ‘Scar Culture’ unsettles more than any other Scottish novel I have read. It’s never as salacious as McLean’s novel often becomes, but like ‘Bunker Man’ it deals with abuse; […]
- Indelible Ink: Alan Spence’s ‘Way To Go’ Alan Spence is one of those writers who seems to stand apart from other contemporary Scottish writers. I’ve been thinking about why this might be, and I think it is a matter of style. If you think of the adjectives that are most often applied to modern Scottish fiction they will include; grim, gritty, urban, […]
- Indelible Ink: Alexander Trocchi’s ‘Young Adam’ There are times when a piece of art comes along and nothing is ever the same again. Such arrivals fulfill three functions; they come to represent their time, they change what will follow, and, often brutally, they kill what had preceded them. Or at least appear to at the time. Think of the impact Joyce’s […]
- Indelible Ink: Doug Johnstone’s ‘The Ossians’ Writing about music in prose is difficult to get right. Fictional bands are judged against the great Spinal Tap and most readers will be aware of all the clichés that accompany rock n’ roll and those who play it from the many biographies of bands (personal recommendations are ‘The Hammer of the Gods’ which details […]
- Indelible Ink: Robin Jenkins’ ‘The Changeling’ When we think of modern Scottish literature it is usually accepted that we are considering writing from the 1970s to the present day. However, there are writers who spoil that neat picture, writers who were being published in the 1950s and 60s and continued to produce new work into the latter decades of the 20th […]
- Indelible Ink: Ali Smith’s ‘The Accidental’ Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Every story has a beginning, middle and an end. Ali Smith’s 2004 novel ‘The Accidental’ takes this truth and plays with it in a manner that is inventive, witty and incredibly assured. Smith had been winning awards and a growing readership since her […]
