A new documentary film explores the life of Megan Boyd who, when she died aged 86, was famous in the fishing world for creating exquisite flies that bagged some of the biggest salmon ever caught—and even a Prince! by Paul F Cockburn. Filmmaker Eric Steel never met Megan Boyd. Indeed, he only first learned about […]
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Gary Gibson Interview
How would you describe your work? My work gets compared to writers like Neal Asher and Peter Hamilton but, in my head, I’m trying to write like Greg Bear and other American hard SF writers I grew up reading–but then, Neal and Peter probably read the same stuff. Is your new novel Marauder connected to […]
EIBF 2013
Despite my Fringe reviewing commitments, I managed to fit in some reporting duties during this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, on behalf of that home of “Independent Cultural Journalism”, The Skinny. The links to the articles are: • Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference Event (17 August) • Matt Morris & Edward Ross (23 August) • Ben […]
Craig Hill Interview
First published by The Scots Magazine, (September 2013 issue). “I’ve done it the mad way round,” says Craig Hill, Scotland’s most famous kilt-wearing stand-up comedian, of his recent Australian adventure. “If you’re touring in Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and Sidney, you stay there. I don’t do that. I come back because of the Glaswegian demand! […]
Out on the Fringe
CRAIG HILL Scottish comedian Craig Hill has toured his saucily-punned shows around the UK and internationally. What’s it like being a gay stand-up? It’s pretty much like being any stand-up; it just comes down to whether you’re funny or not. Some people think gay comedy is about being gay but, really, all it is is […]
Mary, Queen of Scots
This summer’s big exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Chambers Street, Edinburgh, focuses on the life and death of Mary (or, given her French upbringing, should that be Marie?) Stewart, Queen Regnant of Scotland from 1542 to 1587. Significant loans from public and private collections in Scotland, England and France build on the NMS’s own […]
Adam Thirlwell: Found in Translation
“I had this idea of doing it almost as some kind of art project,” says Adam Thirlwell of the concept which would eventually become an issue of iconoclastic US literary magazine McSweeney’s Quarterly, and is being published in the UK by Portobello Books. “I just thought it’d be fun to get one story translated in […]
