The mainstreaming of Out There, an anthology of prose and poetry by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender writers from Scotland, is a sign of the times, receiving, as it did, a contribution from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. There’s a stellar cast of writers, including Ali Smith, Jackie Kay, Val McDermid, Louise Welsh, Jo Clifford, Read More
Kirsty Gunn’s latest collection of short stories, Infidelities, is a beautiful, subtle work, invested in exploring different forms of narrative and working them to form a tapestry of all the ways humans can stray from one another: physically, mentally, literally, and even in their inability to recall events in the same way. “Memorial” explores the Read More
Football is always said to be “the beautiful game” or a “religious cult” and now there is a book that wants to prove both of those statements correct. David Peace’s previous works tend to focus on the darker side of the north of England, masculinity and the neoliberal individualism that was seen in the 1980s; Read More
Water is the element in Jenny Lewis’s latest collection, Taking Mesopotamia. From the locus of Mesopotamia (meaning the land “between two rivers”), the poems encompass the waters of childbirth (“Mine”), the flooded irrigation ditches in Iraq (“April 1916”), the grey rain of the Rhondda (“Blaenclydach”) and the flood myths of Gilgamesh and Noah. The opening Read More
Touching, funny, pensive, self-aware, honest. Michel Faber’s discussion of his latest novel, The Book of Strange New Things was all of these. Following the story of Peter Leigh, a Christian missionary who leaves his loving wife Beatrice behind spread his faith to the alien world of Oasis, Faber’s novel is a fabulous study of love, Read More
This is an edited transcript of an interview with Michel Faber with headings inserted for ease of reading and navigation. The video of the complete interview can be accessed by clicking the above image. A review of The Book of Strange New Things is available HERE. Alex Henry’s review of Michel Faber’s reading at the 2014 Dundee Literary Read More
Popular culture clings. It aspires to immortality, presenting itself as an essential part of social existence. And we readily acknowledge it as such. This is precisely what is explored in Double Bill, an anthology of poems about popular culture as a thing that survives history and becomes ageless. But it is not just agelessness that Read More
“Suddenly he could think things through, he could put things together, where in the past years he’d been unable to… Tears dripped down his face in relief. Was he finally free? Was he really himself again?” Willy Vlautin’s The Free is a compelling novel of compassion and sacrifice. Its setting is that of post-war America Read More
This is an edited transcript; the video of the complete interview can be accessed by clicking the above image. A review of The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion is available HERE. Susan Mains: Welcome to our conversation today with Kei Miller who is visiting us here at Dundee as part of the Dundee Literature Read More
This is an edited transcript; the video of the complete interview can be accessed by clicking the above image. Alice Tarbuck’s review of A Wild Adventure and Concerning the Atlas of Scotland is available HERE. Alice Tarbuck: Good morning. On behalf of the Dundee University Review of the Arts and the Dundee Literary Festival, welcome to Read More