Paper Thistle Author Insights

Author Insight: How C.J. Cooke turned psychological suspense into a modern ghost story tradition

C.J. Cooke drags the ghost story back from décor. Her hauntings aren’t jump-scares; they’re patterns—domestic[...]

Author Insight: Louise Welsh’s Glasgow Isn’t a Postcard

Welsh’s Glasgow isn’t dreich décor; it’s a market with teeth. In Bowery Auctions, taste launders[...]

Author Insight: Why Emma Christie’s writing does not ask for sympathy

Christie refuses the bargain where pain earns forgiveness. Her characters do not explain themselves into[...]

Author Insight: Sarah Maine and the persistence of the past in Scottish fiction

Maine treats the past as infrastructure, not memory. It persists through land, ownership, silence, and[...]

Author Insight: If you like your crime polite David F. Ross will ruin your evening

Polite crime novels hand you a culprit and a clean conscience. David F. Ross hands[...]

Author Insight: Kirsty Logan and the politics of not explaining yourself

Logan refuses the demand to be legible on cue. Her fiction treats explanation as compliance[...]

Author Insight: Why Helen Sedgwick’s fiction unsettles readers who want certainty

Sedgwick refuses the fantasy that clarity arrives if you read correctly. Bodies, knowledge, and morality[...]

Author Insight: How Andrew O’Hagan made friendship into serious literature without going soft

Friendship gets sold as comfort: banter, chosen-family glow, proof you’re still decent. Andrew O’Hagan trashes[...]

Author Insight: Speculative realism without apology: the dangerous clarity of Rachelle Atalla

Atalla writes dystopia without the comfort padding. Her futures are the present with politeness removed:[...]

Author Insight: John Niven and the politics of laughing at the powerful

Niven’s satire is political because it refuses reverence. He laughs at power as ideology, not[...]