Charlotte Runcie

Geek Walks and Dead Sleazy among the Glasgow Science Festival 2013 highlights

Other top events include a Festival of Frogs and the science of whisky

As it enters its sixth year, the biggest draw of the Glasgow Science Festival continues to be a huge range of family events. Whether you’re a hardcore chemistry aficionado or just curious about big bangs and bright flashes, this year’s offerings should…

UK Green Film Festival 2013 - Glasgow screenings

Programme highlights include More than Honey, Promised Land and Trashed

Feed your conscience.So you’ve spent the whole winter with the central heating on full, the TV showing back-to-back Game of Thrones and the fridge stuffed with fruit flown in from Kenya. Necessary for survival, right? Perhaps not. Undo your ungreen…

2013 Aye Write! literary festival includes Darcey Bussell, Henry McLeish and Will Gompertz

Glasgow literary festival also features Alasdair Gray, Jackie Kay and David Greig

What do ballet and football have in common? How about art and food? The varied line-up at this year’s Aye Write! festival compares and contrasts (and, by the sounds of things, works up a real appetite) with events starring the likes of Darcey Bussell…

Why sending Bonnie Tyler to Eurovision says we're not taking it seriously

Nobody’s going to vote for a country that looks like it doesn't care

The morning when we find out who is to represent the UK at Eurovision is like mini Christmas, a sparkly surprise waiting to be unwrapped when we wake up. But evidently, for the last two years, we’ve been on the ‘naughty’ list, being allocated once-great…

StAnza 2013 to feature appearances by Liz Lochhead, Luke Wright and John Burnside

The poetry festival will also feature art exhibitions, including screenprints by Ian Hamilton Finlay

This year’s StAnza has already had its ups and downs. The recent shock closure of the Byre Theatre in St Andrews (StAnza’s customary nerve centre) almost spelled disaster for the international poetry festival: with the announcement made just weeks…

Food, print and zoo subscriptions - the perfect last minute gift

Featuring animal adoption, monthly book and magazine subscriptions and early bird ticket offers

It’s 8am on Christmas morning. All the stockings have been opened. Wrapping paper is strewn everywhere. Grandpa’s on his third sherry. But you have one trick left up your sleeve: a gift that will last all year or, at least, a few months into…

Hot 100 2012: 10-2

John Tiffany, Andy Murray and Luke Fowler among Scotland's hottest cultural contributors in 2012

The Hot 100 is our list of Scotland’s 100 hottest individuals and groups who’ve made a splash this year, from comic book writers to comedians, artists to actors. If they've contributed to Scotland's cultural landscape in 2012, you'll find them here.

Hot 100 2012: 29-20

Chvrches, Cora Bissett and Grant Morrison among Scotland's hottest cultural contributors in 2012

The Hot 100 is our list of Scotland’s 100 hottest individuals and groups who’ve made a splash this year, from comic book writers to comedians, artists to actors. If they've contributed to Scotland's cultural landscape in 2012, you'll find them here.

Hot 100 2012: Team GB

A roll call of the Scottish Olympians who helped Britain's Olympic squad to victory

There’s no denying that 2012 was the Year of British Sport (2013 looks set to be the Year of the Lie-Down before it all kicks off again for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow). And yes, yes, the Olympic squad might technically be called Team GB…

Cinderella - Royal Lyceum

A fair enough comedy, but by Lyceum standards this panto lacks magic and fully-formed ideas

Not many family Christmas shows begin with a girl scattering her mother’s ashes. The children behind me at the Lyceum’s seasonal offering, a little confused, gasped in wonder as Cinderella distributed the remains. They whispered, a little uncertainly…

Tips for performing at poetry and spoken word open mic nights

Advice on how to make your poetry reading debut go well

Reading your own poems out loud to a room full of strangers might sound terrifying. Having done it a few times myself, I can confirm that it is. But with the number of poetry open mic nights in Scotland increasing, sometimes eclipsing their musical…

The Unthanks - Diversions Vol. 3: Songs from the Shipyards

The Unthanks have shrunk. Less than half the size of previous incarnations (since 2009 they’ve hovered at around ten members at any one time), the band behind Diversions Vol 3 is leaner, meaner. There are only five of them. The third release in what…

A guide to publishing companies in Scotland

The innovative companies keeping the Scottish literary scene buzzing

If one press has led the way in Scottish publishing, it’s Canongate. The team may be relatively small, but since Yann Martel won the Booker for Life of Pi in 2002, its global impact has been difficult to ignore. Canongate now publishes Barack Obama’s…

Jacob M Appel's The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up wins Dundee Book Prize

Unpublished author impresses panel featuring Stephen Fry and Philip Pullman

It’s been a long eight years for American bioethicist-turned-author Jacob M Appel. That’s the length of time he’s been looking for a publisher for his novel, The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up, which won the Dundee International Book Prize for unpublished…

Matthew Lenton on the Lyceum's new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

It can be difficult to think of a way to make one of Shakespeare’s most popular and performed plays feel new. But director Matthew Lenton of Vanishing Point, who brings a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the Royal Lyceum this month, has…

Christopher Reid - Nonsense

Poetry collection alive with voices and stories that occasionally feels burnt out

Since winning the 2009 Costa Book Award for A Scattering, Christopher Reid hasn’t stopped to smell the roses. He’s brought out a Selected Poems and this whole new collection, Nonsense, a book split into four featuring a diverse set of voices. Where A…

Johnny McKnight discusses The Incredible Adventures of See Thru Sam

The play will transplant a superhero story into an average secondary school

A play about superheroes has been a long time coming from Johnny McKnight, writer and director of See Thru Sam, which heads to the Tron this month courtesy of Random Accomplice. It’s the story of an ordinary boy with the extraordinary power of…

Luke Wright: Your New Favourite Poet

Rock’n’roll tour de force of performance poetry

Despite the title of Luke Wright’s show this year, he doesn’t mind if he’s not quite your new favourite poet. Being second to Larkin is not, he concedes, to be sneezed at. I’m not quite sure he really occupies the same niche as the post-war poet…

Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel

Inspirational one-on-one poetry experience with Ryan Van Winkle

Poetry readings have often suffered from small audiences. Ryan Van Winkle has worked that to his advantage: the size of the audience for Red, Like Our Room Used To Feel is precisely one. And that’s why it works. There is nothing scary or awkward…

Felicity Ward: The Hedgehog Dilemma

High-speed hour of breathless laughs from charismatic comedienne

One way to freshen up material about relationships is to frame it in a cute thought experiment. Imagine two hedgehogs getting ready for winter. Do they cuddle together, and risk hurting each other with their spines? Or do they sit apart, not getting…

Confessions of a Grindr Addict

Conspiratorial reminiscences and anecdotes make up this compelling take on dating in the modern age

Felix is getting ready to go out for a date, his first in ages. For a long time he’s relied on meeting guys via location-based gay dating app Grindr, for not much more than, well, you know. The thought of an actual date, with the boy right there in…

David Vann talks about new novel Dirt before 2012 Edinburgh Book Festival

Writing books that are not for a mother’s eyes

‘I didn’t plan to write this book. It would’ve been better if I hadn’t written it, in fact.’ You can see David Vann’s point, but only because of his latest novel’s content, not its quality. Dirt is about a troubled young man in an incestuous and abusive…

Midnight at the Boar’s Head

Shakespeare's characters meet and clash in a folksy pub setting

Here’s one: a porter, a king and a shrew walk into a bar. What happens next? Midnight at the Boar’s Head bumps Shakespeare’s characters’ heads together as they meet in a pub to get drunk, pick fights and flirt with strangers, all in Shakespeare’s…

The Beast

With uke and loop pedal Bowden commands a spellbound crowd

Stuart Bowden wants to tell you a story about a beast. His name is Winslow and he lives on the edge of town, just a short helicopter ride away if you happen to have a helicopter. Winslow is a little awkward and a little lonely, one of his prized…

John Robertson: The Old Whore

Hilarious, unpredictable comedy in surreal, storytelling show

This show isn’t so much about what John Robertson’s saying as it is about what he might suddenly decide to do next. The surreal storytelling, flitting between anecdotes like an Antipodean Jackanory-era Rik Mayall, dressed as a baroque bumblebee, is just…