There are a lot of islands off the North-West coast of Europe, so it is easy to get lost among them, or even mislay one. In Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone, John Lennon is trying to get back to his island in Clew Bay, in the very west of the West, but has forgotten which of them Read More
With her debut novel Jack in the Box, Hania Allen makes her pitch for a place in the highly competitive crime fiction genre. Set at the turn of the millennium, the novel follows DCI Yvonne ‘Von’ Valenti as she attempts to solve a murder which harks back to a number of unsolved cases from 1985 Read More
“Nothing endures but the land”, and nothing quite captures the overarching theme of Lewis Grassic Gibbons’ classic novel than this, its most famous quote. Sunset Song, the first novel of the trilogy “A Scots Quair”, is set in The Mearns (now Aberdeenshire) on the eve of the First World War. Widely regarded as one of Read More
On the 11th November 2015, I was fortunate enough to interview Jim Hinks, who is Project Lead at Comma Press for their latest piece of software, MacGuffin – available as an App for iOS or Android, as well as a website. As the press release says: “The MacGuffin App has a simple, yet revolutionary, innovation: Read More
A debut work in the form of a collection of short stories is still a rarity; it would normally only be published well into a writer’s career, possibly after a number of novels. Of course the quality of the writing and the depth of talent of the writer can create an exception, and in Kseniya Read More
This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Jim Stewart 22nd October at 2015 Dundee Literary Festival for DURA. The interview can be viewed by clicking on the image above. Jim Stewart: It’s a pleasure to introduce Peter Davidson – a fellow of Campion Hall, University of Oxford. Peter has written poetry, and Read More
Sean O’Brien’s sixth full collection, The Beautiful Librarians, may be seen as large in comparison to its range of overplayed political themes. Opening with the poem “Audiology”, the speaker describes hearing the “unfracked oil of Lancashire”, which may not be termed a tired poetic subject yet, but certainly the rhetoric has the potential to become so. Read More
Alert, morning sharpened by pre-breakfast sun you turn under orange descents foretelling in rowans. Pathed ginger, bright past crocosmia flames, thrown at this garden’s end. Monitoring summer’s last breath, you skinny in – amber, aware. © Beth McDonough</blockquote >
She’d been hit, and laid on the verge. Slinging her dead weight round the shoulders for a two mile walk to the cottage that drew stares, her head walloping this and that way, my hands held her paws at peace. Under the hedge all summer she suffered the usual. Her snarl deterred nothing. Beetles decided Read More
Travelling on the train to Glasgow, I dug around in my bag and found my copy of Douglas Lindsay’s The Legend of Barney Thomson. The cover brandishes the phrase “now a major motion picture”, so it must be a good read, right? A brand new book, I timidly opened the rigid cover, careful not to Read More