Book in free here and pick up a copy in store with 10% off.
]]>White Nights is a series of interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunates that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them. Urszula relates to us, with the sincerest care and honesty, a localised, yet so clearly universal, story of ruin and hope: a story where the protagonists do not ask to be understood, but merely to be seen and to be heard. Kate Webster’s brilliant translation of Urszula’s poetic, yet often earthen, prose brings us to places that, though they are seldom seen in literature, we may never forget.
Joining Urszula in conversation will be the Glasgow-based poet and translator Juana Adcock!
Copies of White Nights (signed by both author + translator) will be available, on the night and MTO Press will also have (free) and exclusive merch available to celebrate their first publication!
Praise for White Nights:
‘A highly artistic study of death encapsulated in moving stories, [where] the setting seems to be a symbol of a larger (ultimately, cosmic) universe, signalled by a reality that is limited to a small number of characters…Honek reveals the bright side of something that is usually only known and seen through darkness.’ - Paulina Subocz-Białek
'Lyricism and brutality. The almost poetic beauty and trivial ugliness of everyday life. And everything is wrapped in a web of sadness and melancholy. The author knows how to create a mood and shows, to put it grandiosely, sensitivity to the human condition.' – Anna Kozłowska, SwipeTo
'Honek with complete cruelty, but also mastery, symbolically kills her influences. She stands firmly on her own two feet, moving readers with her own voice - immediately clear, set and full.' - Paulina Małochleb, Empik Critics' Choice
Urszula Honek, born in Racławice, Poland, is the author of three poetry books and a short story collection. She is the winner and recipient of several of the most prestigious prizes and grants in Poland and, most recently, she received the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature Prize, in 2020, and the Adam Włodek Prize, in 2021. White Nights was nominated for both Polityka's Passport Award and the Grand Continent Prize, in 2022, and has recently been nominated for the Witold Gombrowicz Literary Prize and the Conrad Award, in 2023. White Nights was also recently awarded the 2023 Kościelski Prize, by the Geneva-based Kościelski Foundation, won previously by writers like Alicia Iwańska, Jolanta Stefko and Olga Tokarczuk, among others.
Juana Adcock is a Mexican poet, translator and editor based in Scotland and working in English and Spanish. Her poems and translations have appeared in publications such as Magma Poetry, Shearsman, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote and Words Without Borders. Her first book, Manca, explores the anatomy of violence in Mexico and was named by Reforma‘s distinguished critic Sergio González Rodríguez as one of the best poetry books published in 2014, and is published in English by Argonáutica. Her English-language debut poetry collection, Split, published in 2019 by Blue Diode Press, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019. Her most recent poetry publication, Vestigial (Stewed Rhubarb Press, 2022), was commissioned by the Alasdair Gray Archive. She has performed at numerous literary festivals internationally. She is co-editor and translator of Temporary Archives: Poetry by Women of Latin America (Arc Publications, 2022). Her translation of Hubert Matiúwàa's indigenous-language poetry collection The Dogs Dreamt (flipped eye, forthcoming 2023) received a PEN Translates award, and her translation of Laura Wittner's Translation of the Route is due for publication in 2024 by the Poetry Translation Centre.
As always Tickets are free but must be booked in advance.
]]>The Day of the Imprisoned Writer is intended to recognize and support writers who resist repression of the basic human right to freedom of expression This day is observed each year on November 15. It was started in 1981 by PEN International Writers in Prison Committee.
In addition to increasing the public's awareness of persecuted writers in general, PEN uses the Day of the Imprisoned Writer to direct attention to several specific persecuted or imprisoned writers and their individual circumstances.
Scottish PEN is part of PEN International, a not-for-profit organisation that champions freedom of speech and literature across borders
As always tickets are free and can be booked here
]]>Recently bereaved Jamie is staying at a rural steading in the heart of Scotland with his actor boyfriend Alex. The sudden loss of both of Jamie's parents hangs like a shadow over the trip. In his grief, Jamie finds himself sifting through bittersweet memories, from his working-class upbringing in Edinburgh to his bohemian twenties in London, with a growing awareness of his sexuality threaded through these formative years.
In the present, when Alex is called away to an audition, Jamie can no longer avoid the pull of the past: haunted by an inescapable failure to share his full self with his parents, he must confront his unresolved feelings towards them. In spare, evocative prose, Allan Radcliffe tells a wistful coming-of-age story and paints a tender portrait of grief in all its complexities.
Allan Radcliffe is a writer and theatre critic for The Times in Scotland and was previously well known among the contributors to the Scotsman, Sunday Herald, Sunday Times, Metro and the Big Issue, among other papers and journals. His poetry and short stories have appeared in Out There, Elsewhere, Markings, the Best Gay Short Stories, New Writing Scotland, Celtic View and Gutter Magazine and he has written a monologue about the painter Frances MacDonald McNair that has been performed at art galleries up and down the country.
Allan will be joined in conversation with Eilidh Akilade. Eilidh is a writer based in Glasgow. She is currently Intersections Editor at The Skinny and her writing can be found in publications such as Extra Teeth, MAP Magazine, gal-dem, and Dazed, amongst others.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can pre-order your copy here
]]>'A masterpiece of the sacred and the profane... A literary triumph.' Jake Arnott, Guardian
How do you build a nation? It takes statesmen and soldiers, farmers and factory workers, of course. But it also takes thieves, prostitutes and policemen.
Nation-building demands sacrifice. And one man knows exactly where those bodies are buried: Cohen, a man who loves his country. A reasonable man for unreasonable times.
A car bomb in the back streets of Tel Aviv. A diamond robbery in Haifa. Civil war in Lebanon.
Rebel fighters in the Colombian jungle. A double murder in Los Angeles. How do they all connect? Only Cohen knows.
Maror is the story of a war for a country's soul - a dazzling spread of narrative gunshots across four decades and three continents. It is a true story. All of these things happened.
It's like the Jewish Godfather!' Silvia Moreno-Garcia
]]>
Cornish mermaids take to the football pitch to protest warming seas. Trans students in Manchester searching for the perfect dick accidentally warp the fabric of spacetime. England's worst pogrom comes for York's particle collider, powered by bread and gender energy.
On Bournemouth beach, a storm delivers an ancestor across oceans of time to sire a drowning descendant. The devil stands a drink at London's famous gay pub, The Black Cap, while Artemis, in the guise of Joan of Arc, roams a life-or-death night in East Sussex. Remember the Witchcraft Act of 1927, and the refugees that fled via cinema to defend the Republic of Catalunya? Of course not, it's been written out of history.
This is England, (but not?) as we know it.
So Mayer is a writer, indie bookseller, film curator, and pencil stan. Their most recent books are Truth & Dare (Cipher Press, 2023), A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula, 2020), a short essay on queer art, censorship and resistance, and <jacked a kaddish> (Litmus, 2018), and they edited Ursula K. Le Guin's Space Crone (Silver Press, 2022), with Sarah Shin.
They will be joined in conversation with Carrie Marshall. Writer, broadcaster and musician Carrie Marshall (she/her) lives in Glasgow with her two children, her greyhound and more guitars than are strictly necessary. Her memoir about coming out as trans, Carrie Kills A Man (published by 404 Ink), was one of The Scotsman’s 2022 books of the year and was shortlisted in the 2023 British Book Awards Discover category.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can pre-order copies of Truth & Dare and Carrie Kills a Man
]]>Radicals & Rogues is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the rise of New York as the twentieth century’s capital of modern culture. Across the 1910s and ’20s, through provocative creative acts, shocking fashion, political activism and dynamic social networks, these women reimagined modern life and fought for the chance to realize their visions.
Taking the reader on a journey through the city’s salons and bohemian hangouts, Radicals and Rogues celebrates the tastemakers, collectors, curators, artists and poets at the forefront of the early avant-garde scene. Focusing on the women trailblazers at the centre of artistic innovation, Lottie Whalen offers a lively new history of remarkable women in early twentieth-century New York City.
Lottie Whalen is a writer, researcher and curator working in the fields of feminist history, avant garde art and textiles. She is the co-founder of Decorating Dissidence, an interdisciplinary arts project that considers radical histories of craft and its potential as a force for change in the modern day. She lives in Glasgow.
Councillor Holly Bruce is an LLB and LLM law graduate who served as a student union President at the University of Aberdeen. She has worked in Patrick Harvie MSP’s regional office since 2019 and was part of the Scottish Greens hugely successful 2021 Holyrood campaign team.
In 2022, she ran a record-breaking campaign in Glasgow, coming first on first preferences, to become an elected councillor on Glasgow City Council. She is one of the youngest women to serve on the council, is vice-chair of the Environment and Liveable Neighbourhoods Committee and chair of the Glasgow Violence Against Women Partnership, as well as the Glasgow Councillor Green Group’s spokesperson on Equalities, Active Travel and Sport.
Holly is a feminist activist, who played a key part in the 2021 Young Women Lead research report – Glasgow: A Feminist City? – and successfully passed her Feminist City motion in October 2022 committing the council to embed a feminist town planning approach into its city development plan.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us by pre-ordering your copy here
]]>Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award
Pain was Joe Grim's self-expression, his livelihood and reason for being. A superstar boxer who rarely won a fight, Grim distinguished himself for his extraordinary ability to withstand physical punishment.
In this wild and expansive novel, Michael Winkler moves between the present day and Grim's 1908–09 tour of Australia, bending genres and histories into a kaleidoscopic investigation of pain, masculinity, and narrative.
Pain is often said to defy the limits of language. And yet Grimmish suggests that pain – physical and mental – is also the most familiar and universal human condition; and, perhaps, the secret source of our impulse to tell stories.
Praise for Grimmish
'A powerful blast of literary ingenuity and originality.' – Lloyd Jones
'I lurched between fits of wild laughter, shudders of horror, and gasps of awe at Winkler's verbal command: the freshness and muscle of his verbs, the unstoppable slow of his images, the bizarre with of the language of pugilism – and all the while, a moving subterranean glint of strange masculine tenderness.' – Helen Garner
'All the makings of a cult classic. It's grotesque and gorgeous, smart and searching.' – The Guardian
Michael Winkler is a writer from Melbourne, Australia, living on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people.
He will be joined in conversation with Alistair Fraser. Alistair is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Glasgow, writing about issues of youth, crime and urban space. From 2017-2018 he was a BBC New Generation Thinker, making broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, and has written for The Times Literary Supplement. He is currently developing a podcast series on youth culture around the world.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance, you can help out the shop by pre-ordering your copy of the book here
]]>Oliver was a successful, clever, healthy twenty-five-year old. Then one day the migraine started. For ten months, the pain was constant, exacerbated by writing, reading, using computers, looking at phones or anything with a screen. Slowly, Oliver began to disappear.
One evening, Oliver googled the only thing he could think of: 'full-time job, no experience, Sydney'. An ad for a train guard appeared. For two years Oliver watched others live their lives, observing the intimacy of strangers brought together briefly and connected by the steady march of time.
Exquisitely written and bravely told, Train Lord is a searingly personal yet hugely relatable book, which asks what happens when your sense of self is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back.
Oliver Mol is the author of the critically acclaimed Lion Attack!. He was the inaugural winner of the Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers as well as the recipient of an Australian Council Grant. In 2020, the stage show of Train Lord proved a runaway success during the Sydney Fringe Season. Oliver grew up dividing his time between Texas and Brisbane and now lives in Sydney.
He'll be joined in conversation with Ryan O'Connor. Ryan received the Scottish Book Trust Next Chapter Award in 2018; later the same year he was Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize short story category. His debut novel, The Voids, was published by Scribe in 2022. Shortlisted for Scotland's National Book Awards, it has received widespread critical acclaim. In the Guardian, Benjamin Myers called it 'Luminous,' in the Scotsman Sturt Kelly declared it 'Remarkable … the most intriguing Scottish debut for a decade. While Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile said, 'I want to say this is a book God would like.' He currently lives in Glasgow with his partner and two young sons.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can pre-order your copy in advance.
]]>Based on transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, the novel investigates form and authenticity in a feat of synthesis reminiscent of Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony. As Scanlan puts it, ‘I wanted to preserve – amplify, exaggerate – Sonia’s idiosyncratic speech, her bluntness, her flair as a storyteller. I arrived at what you could call a composite portrait of a self.’ Whittled down with a fiercely singular artistry, Kick the Latch bangs out of the starting gate and carries the reader on a careening joyride around the inside track.
Kathryn Scanlan is the author of The Dominant Animal and lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in NOON, Granta and Fence, and is forthcoming in The Paris Review. Her story ‘The Old Mill’ was selected by Michael Cunningham for the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. She has degrees in painting, writing, and English from the University of Iowa and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her debut novel, AUG 9—FOG, a literary adaptation of a found diary, was published by FSG in 2019.
Copies are available in store with 10% discount but please do register if attending the discussion so we can keep a track of numbers
]]>****IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE*****
In a fit of excitement we've seen to update this very special event to a pot luck dinner to celebrate the paperback launch.
Participants will be invited (but not required) to bring a dish which feels like home to share , if you're unable to bring anything please don't worry and if you have any dietary requirements please let us know in advance and we will make sure you are well fed. I'll be updating this page to let everyone know what's for dinner
Join us for an evening with Chitra Ramaswamy to celebrate her book Homelands : The history of a friendship
This book is about two unlikely friends. One born in 1970s Britain to Indian immigrant parents, the other arrived from Nazi Germany in 1939, fleeing persecution.
This is a story of migration, racism, family, belonging, grief and resilience. It is about the state we’re in now and the ways in which we carry our pasts into our futures.
THE SALTIRE’S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GUARDIAN’S BEST MEMOIR AND BIOGRAPHY OF 2022
“Homelands is beautiful in unusual and wonderful ways, beyond the grace and magic when its prose rises almost to poetry. It is an extravagant exploration of the imaginative possibilities of empathy, of how a friendship can build a bridge across differences in origins and age, how you can enter into another life, why you should, what happens when you do”
REBECCA SOLNIT
“Remarkable”
The Times
“Achingly beautiful”
Guardian
“An utterly engrossing story that spans the twentieth century, surveying otherness, family and belonging, but above all friendship. I could not stop reading this gorgeous book”
DENISE MINA
“An eloquent testament to the tribulations of national belonging”
New Statesman
Chitra Ramaswamy is an award-winning journalist and author. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy, won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize. She has contributed essays to Antlers of Water, Nasty Women, The Freedom Papers, The Bi-ble and Message from the Skies. She is a TV critic for the Guardian, the restaurant critic for The Times Scotland, a columnist for the National Trust for Scotland and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio Scotland. She lives in Edinburgh with her partner, two young children and rescue dog. you can follow here @Chitgrrl
As always tickets are free but need to be booked in advance and you can pre order a copy of the paperback here.
The Menu So Far
Latke / Cucumber salad / Tabbouleh / Puliyogare / Tomato and Dahl Raita / Lamingtons / Hummus / Tiger Bread / Vegan Gyoza / Chocolate Babka / Something delicious for the table
book your tickets now - copies available in store with a 10% discount
]]>We will be launching three publications:
The Last Song: Words for Frightened Rabbit edited by Aaron Kent and Maria Sledmere
Dastram/Delirium by Taylor Strickland
Let Us (or the Invocation of Smoke) by Shehzar Doja
There will be readings from: Taylor Strickland, Shehzar Doja, Jo Higgs, jade king and Emma Whitelaw
About the books
The Last Song is a poignant tribute to one of the most beloved bands of our time. This book takes readers on a journey through the heart and soul of Frightened Rabbit's music, exploring themes of love, loss, and the human condition with raw emotion and lyrical beauty. Each page is a powerful reflection on the band's songs, offering a new perspective on the music that has touched so many lives. Whether you're a die-hard fan or discovering Frightened Rabbit for the first time, The Last Song is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the power of music to move us and inspire us.
Taylor Strickland’s Dastram/Delirium samples the soaring verse of one of Scotland’s pivotal poetic talents, Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair. Formal innovation, political protest, revelry in nature, and erotic praise poetry are all contained here, the first full-length collection of Alasdair to appear in English in over a century. An Enlightenment mind and contemporary of Pope, Hume and Burke, his poetry should have been the indigenous genius Samuel Johnson and James Boswell sought out in their now-infamous literary tour through the Highlands and Islands. Though much-celebrated within his native Gaelic language, Alasdair’s poetry is as much neglected outside of Gaelic. But now, in novel literary translations by Taylor Strickland, readers can re-visit his oeuvre and restore his name to the wider literary conscience.
Let us (or the invocation of smoke) by Shehzar Doja is a mysterious and ethereal pamphlet. The words patter inexplicably onto the page like a tiger dreaming of snow. Through these meditative poems Doja shows a deep engagement with craft, realizing “in that primordial amniotic /we never were / when we were.” His masterful wordplay curls like smoke rising from an extinguished candle
About the authors:
Taylor Strickland is a poet and translator from the US. He is the author of Commonplace Book and Dastram/Delirium, his forthcoming versions of Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (both with Broken Sleep Books). Recently, his poem ‘The Low Road’ was adapted by American composer, Andrew Kohn, and performed in Orkney. His poem ‘Nine Whales, Tiree’ is in the process of being adapted to film with filmmaker Olivia Booker and composer Fee Blumenthaler. He is currently a doctoral candidate in literary translation at the University of Glasgow, and he lives in Glasgow, with his wife, Lauren.
Shehzar Doja is Founder/Editor-in-Chief of The Luxembourg Review and Poetry Reviews Editor at Gutter. His poetry and translations have appeared in New Welsh Review, Pratik, Modern Poetry in Translation, Voice and Verses, Ceremony, Poems from the Edge of Extinction, Gutter, The Centenary Collection for Edwin Morgan, Fundstücke-Trouvailles and more. His poetry collection -Drift- was published by UPL/Monsoon Letters in 2016 and he recently co-edited I am a Rohingya: Poetry from the Camps and Beyond (Arc, 2019)with James Byrne which was the recipient of Poetry Book Society’s inaugural ‘World Choice’ award. In 2021, Shehzar's poem marked the start of Cop 26 in Scotland which was also the catalyst for the first 'Poetry in Parliament' event at Holyrood in 2022 alongside being invited to read at Cop27. He was named a 'Youth Icon' in Bangladesh in 2017 by the Newage Newspaper and a 'Future World Changer' by the University of Glasgow in 2019.
Maria Sledmere is a lecturer and lapsed music journalist based in Glasgow. She is editor-in-chief of SPAM Press and author of poetry books including Visions & Feed (HVTN Press, 2022), String Feeling (Erotoplasty Editions, 2022) and The Luna Erratum (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021). The latter was shortlisted for the Saltire Society's Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2022.
Emma Whitelaw is an English Literature UoG MA graduate and Napier undergraduate in English and Film. She is published in Glasgow zines, including Dolls zine, CHEWGULPSPIT, morii, and Queer Futures. Emma’s favourite theme when writing is magic in mundanity.
Jo Higgs (he/him) lives in Edinburgh, where he is from and is yet to escape. Recently he won the Sloan Prize and was a runner-up in the John Byrne Award. His story in this anthology is inspired by a lyric in the song 'Poke'.
jade king is a dyslexic poet from the UK. She is often told she “looks like a dog person.” Her work has been published or is forthcoming in 3:AM Magazine, Schlag Magazine and Poetry Salzburg Review.
]]>Why play to 12,000 people when you can play to 12? In Autumn 2021, Robin Ince's stadium tour with Professor Brian Cox was postponed due to the pandemic. Rather than do nothing, he decided instead to go on a tour of over a hundred bookshops in the UK, from Wigtown to Penzance; from Swansea to Margate.
Packed with witty anecdotes and tall tales, Bibliomaniac takes the reader on a journey across Britain as Robin explores his lifelong love of bookshops and books - and also tries to find out just why he can never have enough of them. It is the story of an addiction and a romance, and also of an occasional points failure just outside Oxenholme.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us plan the night by pre-ordering your copy here
]]>‘I don't think I've ever read a book that was as profound and moving at every scale – the cell, the family, the universe. In Ascension is a remarkable, expansive, stunning achievement.’ Karen Joy Fowler
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth’s first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.
Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how – no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope – we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.
‘An awe-inspiring and gripping epic’
Graeme Macrae Burnet
Martin MacInnes was born in Inverness in 1983. He is the author of Infinite Ground and Gathering Evidence, and he is the winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, and a Manchester Fiction Prize. In 2021 he was selected by the Guardian/British Council as One of Ten Writers Shaping the UK's Future. He lives in Edinburgh. Martin is available for interviews and events.
Martin will be joined in conversation with Heather Parry, a Glasgow-based writer, editor, event chair and podcast host. Her short stories have appeared internationally in numerous magazines and books. Her fiction explores self-deception, transformation, the grotesque and the body. Her novel Orpheus Builds a Girl was released in 2022. She is the co-founder of Scottish literary magazine Extra Teeth.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us plan the night by pre-ordering your copy in advance
]]>
What can rioting clones, irrepressible cloud entities, new rituals, prison ruins, and tiny telepathic beasties (among other things) teach us about the end of prisons?
Despite its failure to make society safer or to deliver justice for those who have been harmed, the prison still dominates our collective imagination of the best response to harm, and of justice served.
Abolition Science Fiction is a new, free collection of sci fi short stories written by activists and scholars involved in prison abolition and transformative justice in the UK. Come and join contributors to the book and its editor for an evening of readings and discussion about how we can realise a more just future.
Alongside the stories, the book contains writing exercises and discussions of contemporary abolitionist themes. The book is aimed both at those curious about abolition and at seasoned activists who want to explore abolition through creative writing. Abolition Science Fiction comes out of a research project led by Phil Crockett Thomas called Prison Break: Imagining Alternatives to Prison in the UK, which was funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation.
The book is free and paper copies will be available on the night, if you can’t wait to read it go to abolitionscifi.org to download a copy.
]]>Her new poetry collection, entitled The Naked Room, illuminates issues pertaining to mental health. It is a true synthesis of her life as a psychotherapist, (of one not exempt from angst), and her life as a poet. These are poems of the unconscious, the dreamscape, the despondent, the unmoored and the mortal. This collection not only goes inside the inner workings of a clinician’s practice, but has a larger scope, which includes the history of psychiatric treatment with its dangerous “cures” and embedded prejudices, and treatment today and lack thereof for the houseless and insolvent for whom entering the realm of the “therapeutic hour” is a luxury beyond reach.
Matthew Smith is Professor of Health History at the University of Strathclyde’s Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. In addition to writing The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States he has written books and co-edited volumes about ADHD, food allergy, dietary innovation, mental health and food additives. He is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and co-edits the ‘Mental Health in Historical Perspective’ book series for Palgrave.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance, due to title availability it would be very helpful if you could also order your copies of Willa and Matthews books ahead of the event
]]>'A manic tale of blood and suds told with laconic humour and warmly engaging characterisation. Callum McSorley is definitely a talent to watch. I knew within a page that I was in good hands' —Chris Brookmyre
Half of Glasgow thinks DI Alison McCoist is bent. The other half just think she's a fuck-up. No one thinks very much at all about carwash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer's motor for a ride. One kidnapping later, he and the carwash are officially part of Glasgow's criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like 'Keep Yer Kneecaps' with any poor bastard who crosses him. Can Davey escape from the gang's clutches with his kneecaps and life intact? Perhaps this polis Ally McCoist who keeps nosing around the carwash could help. That's if she doesn't get herself killed first.
Callum McSorley graduated from the University of Strathclyde in 2013 and in 2014 was selected for the Hermann Kesten Writing Scholarship in Nuremberg. Since then, his short stories have appeared in Gutter Magazine, Monstrous Regiment, and New Writing Scotland. Squeaky Clean is his debut novel.
Callum will be joined in conversation by Elle Nash. Elle is the founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. Her work has been featured in Volume 1 Brooklyn, The Fanzine, Cosmopolitan, Elle, The Offing, Enclave, and other places. Occasionally she reads tarot in exchange for money. Her debut novel Animals Eat Each Other was published by 404 Ink
Tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us plan the event by ordering your copy at the same time
]]>Thomas Stewart (he/him) is a Welsh writer. He is the author of two pamphlets: Based on a true story (out in November with fourteen poems) and empire of dirt, published by Red Squirrel Press in 2019. In 2021 he was awarded a New Writers Award from Scottish Book Trust and his work has been published in Poetry Wales, Butcher’s Dog, Best Scottish Poems 2019, The Amsterdam Quarterly, And Other Poems, The Glasgow Review of Books, The Stockholm Review of Literature, among others.
Len Lukowski (he/him) is a queer writer and performer based in Glasgow. He writes poetry, fiction, lyrics and memoir. His work has been published in New Writing Scotland, Magma and many other places. In 2018 he won the Wasafiri New Writing Award for Life Writing. Len's debut poetry pamphlet The Bare Thing was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2022. He has played in the punk bands Jean Genet, Twinken Park and Faggot.
Saskia McCracken is a Glasgow-based writer and editor at Osmosis Press. She is a member of 12 collective and the Victoria Writers' Circle. Her publications include Imperative Utopia (-algia press), The King of Birds (Hickathrift Press), Cyanotypes (Dancing Girl Press) and Zero Hours (Broken Sleep Books). She was longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction prize and awarded the Streetcake Experimental Fiction Second Prize. Her work appears in Magma, Datableed, and Amberflora. @SaskiadeRM
Stuart Rawlinson (he/him) is a writer living in Glasgow, where he works as a software developer. Poems of his have been published by Travesties!?, Gutter, Fruit Journal, Pilot Press, and others. His micro-chapbook main args is available as part of the Ghost City Press 2021 Summer Series. He was recently selected as one of the mentees for the Clydebuilt Verse Apprenticeship Scheme.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance
]]>Tickets for this event can be booked for free via eventbrite
]]>
Join us to celebrate the publication of Losing The Plot by Derek Owusu ; A vital and honest book exploring the pain of the immigrant experience and the turmoil it can carry across generations, from the winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize.
Driven by a deep-seated desire to understand his mother’s life before he was born, Derek Owusu offers a powerful imagining of her journey. As she moves from Ghana to the UK and navigates parenthood in a strange and often lonely environment, the effects of displacement are felt across generations.
Told through the eyes of both mother and son, Losing the Plot is at once emotionally raw and playful as Owusu experiments with form to piece together the immigrant experience and explore how the stories we share and tell ourselves are just as vital as the ones we don’t.
Derek Owusu is a writer, poet and podcaster from North London. In 2016 he joined the multi-award-winning literature podcast Mostly Lit. He also produced the well-received This Is Spoke podcast for Penguin Random House and Freemantle Media. His essay on Black men and insecurities was the second-most-read article on Media Diversified in 2018, and his essay on language was picked up by BBC Newsnight to be turned into a short documentary. In 2019 Derek collated, edited and contributed to Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space. His debut novel, That Reminds Me, won the Desmond Elliott Prize.
He will be joined in conversation with Chitra Ramaswamy, an award-winning journalist and author. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy, won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize. She has contributed essays to Antlers of Water, Nasty Women, The Freedom Papers, The Bi-ble and Message from the Skies. She is a TV critic for the Guardian, the restaurant critic for The Times Scotland, a columnist for the National Trust for Scotland and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio Scotland. She lives in Edinburgh with her partner, two young children and rescue dog.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us out by pre-ordering your copy in advance
]]>Gordon J. Brown was born in Glasgow, and lived in London, Toronto and a small village called Tutbury before returning home. His day job, for many years, was as a marketing strategy specialist, and he helped found Scotland’s international crime writing festival, Bloody Scotland. Any Day Now is his tenth novel. He’s a DJ on local radio, has delivered pizzas in Toronto, sold non-alcoholic beer in the Middle East, floated a high-tech company on the London Stock Exchange, compared the main stage at a two-day music festival, and was once booed by 49,000 people while on the pitch at a major football cup final.
Douglas Skelton has published twelve non fiction books and ten crime thrillers. He has been a bank clerk, tax officer, shelf stacker, meat porter, taxi driver (for two days), wine waiter (for two hours), reporter, investigator and local newspaper editor. He has been longlisted three times for the McIlvanney Prize, most recently in 2022. Douglas contributes to true crime shows on TV and radio and is a regular on the crime writing festival circuit.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance
]]>The Scottish independence debate has consequences for Scotland, British politics, the future of the UK - and internationally. In Scotland Rising, Gerry Hassan addresses the key questions in this debate with a deep dive into its history, beyond the usual references to Thatcherism, Toryism and Westminster, by analysing the relative decline of the UK, the nature of the British state, its capitalist economy and politics that underpin it. At the same time, a distinctive, autonomous Scotland has emerged beyond Nichola Sturgeon's SNP and independence that has demanded more self-government.
Scotland Rising highlights the importance of culture, stories and collective voices in reshaping how people see Scotland, both in during the first referendum in 2014 and again today. This debate is of relevance to everyone in the UK, including England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Can politics and democracy liberate people from the wreckage of Westminster? And if the Scots can, could it inspire others? Scotland Rising is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the future of Scotland and the UK.
Gerry Hassan is a leading commentator on Scottish politics and independence. He is Professor of Social Change at Glasgow Caledonian University and the author of many books including The Strange Death of Labour Scotland, The People’s Flag and the Union Jack and Caledonian Dreaming. He has written for The Guardian, openDemocracy, Bella Caledonia, The Scotsman, New Statesman and the Irish Times.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us out by ordering your copy in advance
]]>Eve Livingston is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs, politics and inequalities. She has written for the Guardian, Independent, VICE, Dazed and many others, and has appeared on the BBC and ITV. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils for her writing on trade unions.
Eve will be in conversation with Conrad Landin, a Mount Florida-based journalist and co-editor of New Internationalist. He started writing about the railways as industrial correspondent for the Morning Star, covering numerous trade disputes including the 2016-17 Southern rail strikes. He writes regularly for RAIL magazine, RailReview, ASLEF's Locomotive Journal and RMT News on the politics and history of the railways, and recently reported on the RMT strikes for the London Review of Books. His news reports, features and book reviews have also appeared in Tribune, The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us plan the event by ordering your copy in advance.
]]>Cooking is thinking! The spatter of sauce in a pan, a cook's subtle deviation from a recipe, the careful labour of cooking for loved ones: these are not often the subjects of critical enquiry. Cooking, we are told, has nothing to do with serious thought; the path to intellectual fulfilment leads directly out of the kitchen. In this electrifying, innovative memoir, Rebecca May Johnson rewrites the kitchen as a vital source of knowledge and revelation.
Drawing on insights from ten years spent thinking through cooking, she explores the radical openness of the recipe text, the liberating constraint of apron strings and the transformative intimacies of shared meals. Playfully dissolving the boundaries between abstract intellect and bodily pleasure, domesticity and politics, Johnson awakens us to the richness of cooking as a means of experiencing the self and the world - and to the revolutionary potential of the small fires burning in every kitchen.
Participants will be invited (but not required) to bring a dish to share, if you're unable to bring anything please don't worry and if you have any dietary requirements please let us know in advance and we will make sure you are well fed.
Rebecca May Johnson is a writer whose writing brings critical practices into everyday life. She has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement, Daunt Books Publishing and Vittles, among others. She was a creative writing fellow at the British School at Rome in 2021. She earned a PhD in Contemporary German Literature from UCL in 2016.She also uses online publishing to conduct stylistic experiments: her essay ‘I Dream of Canteens’ was published via TinyLetter and gained widespread acclaim, winning ‘The Browser’ prize for the best piece on the internet in April 2019. Her anonymous waitressing series was voted in the Observer Food Monthly ‘Top 50’ of 2018. She was finalist in the ‘Young British Foodies’ writing prize judged by Marina O’Loughlin and Yotam Ottolenghi. She publishes a newsletter called dinner document where she shares recipes and thoughts about food every week. Small Fires is her first book.
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance. I'll be updating this page to let people know what's for dinner so please email me on info@mountfloridabooks.com and dish your dish. Copies of Small Fires are also available for pre-order
Dishes so far
Green Beans with Parmesan
Onion Bhajis
Greek Salad with Feta
Spicy sweetcorn, tomato and green bean salad.
Plum Torte
Bread
Filo pastry/couscous, salmon dish
Macaroni pie
Lemon tart
Roast veg couscous with feta hummus, sesame and toasted seeds
]]>'Beautifully written, intimate and intellectually fascinating' Nathan Filer
Everybody is talking about the healing properties of nature. Hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens, and forests reimagined as wellbeing centres. On Shetland, it is possible to walk into a doctor's surgery with anxiety or depression, and walk out with a prescription for nature.
Where has this come from, and what does 'going to nature' mean? Where is it - at the end of a garden, beyond the tarmac fringes of a city, at the summit of a mountain? Drawing on history, science, literature and art, Samantha Walton shows that the nature cure has deep roots - but, as we face an unprecedented crisis of mental health, social injustice and environmental devastation, the search for it is more urgent now than ever.
Everybody Needs Beauty engages seriously with the connection between nature and health, while scrutinising the harmful trends of a wellness industry that seeks to exploit our relationship with the natural world. In doing so, this book explores how the nature cure might lead us towards a more just and radical way of life: a real means of recovery, for people, society and nature.
Samantha Walton is a reader in Modern Literature at Bath Spa University, where the focus of her research for the last five years has been the link between nature and mental health. In 2016, she won a major research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a two-year project called ‘Cultures of Nature and Wellbeing: Connecting Health and the Environment through Literature’, and she was a Writing Fellow at the prestigious Rachel Carson Centre in Munich. She is also a poet, and her collection Self Heal was one of the White Review’s books of the year in 2018. She has appeared on the BBC, and at a number of festivals including Green Man and Wilderness to speak about her research. @samlwalton
As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can pre-order a signed copy for collection on the night
]]>Rosa Campbell lives in Leith and is a lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of St Andrews. Her poetry has appeared in various places, including Oxford Poetry, fourteen poems, Perverse, Ambit, Gutter and SPAM. Her first book, Pothos, a memoir-ish lyric essay about grief and houseplants, was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021. She tweets as @rosaetc
Annie Muir’s debut pamphlet New Year’s Eve was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021. Pre-pandemic she handed out poems on the street outside local libraries, and has a podcast – Time for one Poem – aimed at complete beginners to poetry.
Saskia McCracken is a Glasgow-based writer and editor at Osmosis Press. Her publications include Imperative Utopia (-algia press), Cyanotype (Dancing Girl Press) and Zero Hours (Broken Sleep Books). She was longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction prize and awarded the Streetcake Experimental Fiction Second Prize. Her work appears in Magma, Datableed, and Amberflora. @SaskiadeRM
Maria Sledmere is a poet, artist and critic based in Glasgow, where she also teaches. She is editor-in-chief of SPAM Press and a member of the art and ecology collective, A+E. Her debut collection, The Luna Erratum, is out now with Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Recent publications include Sans Soleil, a collaboration with fred spoliar (Face Press/Mermaid Motel, 2022), and String Feeling (Erotoplasty Editions, 2022). She is co-editor of the weird folds: everyday poems from the anthropocene (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020). Find her at mariasledmere.com (Author photo credit to Alexander Hoyles.)
Samuel Tongue's collections include Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) and three pamphlets: The Nakedness of the Fathers (Broken Sleep, 2022), Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018), Hauling-Out (Eyewear, 2016). Poems have appeared in many places including Banshee Lit, Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Finished Creatures, PBLJ, The Interpreter's House, Under the Radar and elsewhere.
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