Rodge Glass

Robin Robertson

Poet with an impressive range talks about his newest batch

17 Aug 2010

Though widely known as one of British publishing’s finest editors, Robin Robertson is also a highly acclaimed poet. Since his 1997 debut collection A Painted Field, he has been the recipient of numerous prizes, both for books and individual poems. Most…

Book to the Future

Considering the future of how we read

1 Oct 2009

It’s not quite meltdown yet. The good news is, some stories are projected to sell well in the coming year – the adventures of a young magician, the new Dan Brown, also some book called The Bible (sometimes bought in two parts, doubling sales potential).

The Generation Game: Douglas Coupland

18 years after his breakthrough, the Generation X author, provides us with a sequel. Of sorts.

20 Aug 2009

Fans and critics have known it was coming for months, with rumour and misinformation clogging up chat rooms and columns. Now that Generation A is finally set to be unleashed upon the reading public, we’ll see if the furious debate will have been…

Denise Mina

How real events inspired crime fiction

7 Aug 2009

Denise Mina has been busy. In the last couple of years she has shown real versatility by branching out into drama, with her plays Ida Tamson and A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle being successfully produced at Glasgow’s Oran Mor. She has also braved…

Aye Write! - James Frey

5 Mar 2009

Truth is a slippery business, and those who deal in it should be careful. This was what Haruki Murakami was saying last month when he accepted the Jerusalem Prize, a controversial writers’ award. He opened his speech saying: ‘I have come to Jerusalem…

New Bands

19 Feb 2009

Young Fathers Although those in the neighbourhood know that Scottish hip hop has been active for many years now, it’s still the kind of unlikely concept which can make the national media gasp, sit up and scratch their head. Take the good tidings that…

James Yorkston

27 Nov 2008

It’s no longer news to say a James Yorkston album has been ‘critically acclaimed’ – because they always are. Since coming to John Peel’s attention in 2001, releasing early material through the Fence Collective and moving on to recent albums with Domino…

TV on the Radio

13 Nov 2008

Three years ago the alternative music industry seemed determined to talk itself into a coma. You couldn’t open a magazine or turn on the radio without suffering some whinging executive complaining about the internet killing music. Fans who downloaded…

James Bond - Killer Tracks

30 Oct 2008

When Bond's latest music maker, Jack White, told Rolling Stone magazine recently that he wanted to 'join the family of Barry, Bassey, Connery and Craig', he cleverly omitted any reference to the occasional black sheep of the 007 family. After all…

Angil and the Hiddntracks, Aidan Moffat and De Rosa

16 Oct 2008

INDIE Chemikal Underground is best known for a generation of great bands who have now mostly split up or moved on, so fresh blood is needed. Tonight’s showcase presents suggests where the label goes next. First on, Martin of De Rosa previews new…

Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances

19 Jun 2008

EXPERIMENTAL DRAMA (Fourth Estate) Very few books are either complex enough to keep a reader interested until the end or simple enough to describe in a few words. The debut novel by Rivka Galchen proves it is possible to be both. The story is easy…

Mogwai - Mogwai Young Team

22 May 2008

ROCK (Chemikal Underground) This louder, longer edition of Mogwai’s debut is a powerful reminder of what music can do for the soul: on release in ‘97 it was a real shock. Their mostly instrumental, blistering sound re-energised Scottish music and was…

Anne Donovan - Being Emily

8 May 2008

I first saw Anne Donovan in 2001 on the underground ‘stage’ of Glasgow’s 13th Note Café, surrounded by beer bottles, graffiti and posters advertising upcoming gigs by the punk and metal bands that usually played there. People were crammed into the tiny…

Aye Write! - Hanif Kureishi

28 Feb 2008

Hanif Kureishi is one of the most prolific, radical and ambitious writers around. He’s also one of the most multi-talented, having started out as a playwright in the 1970s and since written novels, journalism and directed films. He’s been busier than…

Norman Mailer

9 Aug 2007

Writing about difficult subjects helped turn Norman Mailer into a literary star. Rodge Glass analyses his career and believes only he could have broken the final taboo

Frank Muir

9 Aug 2007

If Festival visitors were asked where they expect Scottish crime novels to be set, a fair few would probably think of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh first, or Denise Mina’s Glasgow.

Irvine Welsh

18 Jun 2007

(Photo: © Steve Double) It’s a busy time for Irvine Welsh. It’s only been a year since the release of his last novel but since then he’s been involved in multiple projects, many of them off the page. His first full-length TV drama Wedding Belles…

Doug Johnstone - Tombstoning

Doug Johnstone

18 Sep 2006

MYSTERY DRAMA This debut from polymath Doug Johnstone (novelist, journalist, multi-instrumentalist with Fence Collective band Northern Alliance) is a book about returning and reassessing. ‘The past wasn’t a scary place,’ says thirtysomething…

Kate Atkinson - Behind the Scenes at the Museum - (1995)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

How many books have you read recently that begin with 25 pages conducted, quite amicably, from inside the womb? This one, told in part through the eyes of unwanted baby Ruby Lennox (conception onwards), and in part through the tragic history of her…

Robert Alan Jamieson - A Day at the Office (1991)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

‘We should be free to wander,’ says the unnamed narrator early on. And that’s exactly what the author goes on to do. Pity the poor typesetter: each page of this book – a precursor to much modern experimental Scottish fiction – looks more like a work of…

Archie Hind - The Dear Green Place (1966)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

There are two kinds of books in this list: great fiction by people who happen to come from Scotland, and great fiction influenced by and composed with Scotland in mind. The Dear Green Place is perhaps the best example of the latter. From renditions of…

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Before the Empire - the midnight queues round the block, the merchandise, the films and 800-page sequels - there was The Philosopher's Stone. It's easy to forget just what a phenomenon it is, and why. The story begins with Hagrid taking an 11-year-old…

Willa Muir - Imagined Corners (1931)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Willa Muir may be one of the lesser known names on this list, but that's due more to her date of birth (and perhaps her husband's name) than her undoubted talent. One of Scotland's foremost feminists, a brilliant, experimental psychology student and…