Martin Cathcart Froden’s debut historical crime novel “The Devil take the Hindmost” won the 2015 Dundee International Book Prize of five thousand pounds and publication with Freight Books. Set in the velodromes of London and the Midlands in the late nineteen twenties, it follows the adventures of a young highlander. Paul arrives at Kings Cross Read More
I’m about to interview James Kelman, inarguably one of the most important writers working in Britain today. As I climb the stairs of the University of Dundee’s Tower Building, I’m feeling terribly anxious. Over the course of his career, Kelman has garnered a bit of a reputation for giving quite thorny interviews and I’m Read More
(This is a lightly edited transcript of the interview; to view the whole interview, please click image above) Edward Small: Hello. I’m Eddie Small. I lecture in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee and we’re here today to do an interview with one of our past students on behalf of DURA, Dundee University Review of Read More
(Ed- Prior to publishing excerpts from the 2017 Notting Hill Editions Essay prize shortlist, we asked the marvellous essayist Chris Arthur to write a piece on the essay within the academy… Read & let us know what you think by leaving your comments below.) Students don’t believe me when I say they’ve never written an Read More
(This is a lightly edited transcript of the interview; to view the whole interview, please click image above) Stephen Carruthers: Good Afternoon. I’m Stephen Carruthers from the Dundee University Review of the Arts and I’m here with Joe Douglas, the Associate Artistic Director of Dundee Rep Theatre. Joe Douglas: Hello. SC: Joe, you joined the Read More
(This is a lightly edited transcript of a filmed interview that can be watched by clicking on the image above.) Vivien Williams: Hello, I’m Vivien Williams and I am a research assistant at the University of Glasgow where I also completed recently a Ph.D on the cultural history of the bagpipe in Britain. The bagpipe Read More
I sit in the hidden café of Bonar Hall (as a four-year undergrad student I had no idea it existed) waiting for Sandra Ireland. I hold her book in my hands and wonder what she’ll be like. The book is macabre and unsettling, dead gerbils as hand puppets and warm mugs of coffee in an Read More
What’s so great about simplicity? We’re always being told that the simple life is the right kind of life, uncluttered by unnecessary anxieties and the desires that fuel them. The simple message is the honest one, and the simple fact the thing that really happened. Now of course “simple” has got all complicated by terrifying Read More
The DCA doesn’t seem like the right place to meet Russel D. McLean. It doesn’t seem fitting for the author of the five McNee Private Investigator novels, all set in the grimmer parts of Dundee, to be meeting up with me in this most contemporary and modern of venues. As he arrives a little flustered, Read More
“So Don, why do you love poetry?” It takes only three words of Don Paterson’s reply to what I naively think will be a nice, easy first question for me to understand that this is not going to be an hour of nice, easy assumptions. “Oh I don’t” he replies immediately “that would be a Read More
