Paper Thistle Author Insights

Author Insight: How Douglas Stuart makes poverty and addiction impossible to look away from

Douglas Stuart doesn’t write poverty as atmosphere. In his Glasgow, addiction is a daily force[...]

Author Insight: Mairi Kidd and the politics of telling women’s stories without asking permission

Kidd writes women out of the margins and back into the machinery of history. She[...]

Author Insight: Michelle Sloan and the quiet grit of Scottish storytelling across generations

Scottish culture mistakes loudness for grit and pats quieter work into the “nice” drawer. Sloan[...]

Author Insight: The strange tenderness in Evie Wyld’s brutal novels

Wyld writes brutality as climate, not event, and threads tenderness through it like a splinter.[...]

Author Insight: Tamsin Calidas: Belonging, brutality, and the wild as witness

Calidas wrecks the cosy “escape to the wild” fantasy. I Am an Island makes romance[...]

Author Insight: Why Daniel Aubrey’s Orkney Mysteries hit harder than mainland noir

Mainland noir hides behind crowds and Aubrey’s Orkney books remove the mask. On islands everyone[...]

Author Insight: Karen Campbell’s fiction where compassion has to fight for oxygen

Karen Campbell writes compassion like it’s fighting for oxygen. In her Glasgow and beyond, kindness[...]

Author Insight: The evolution of Francine Toon’s dark, landscape-led storytelling

Francine Toon uses landscape as pressure, not scenery. In Pine, the Highland forest becomes a[...]

Author Insight: Chris Kohler and the new Scottish grit-lit that doesn’t cosplay hardship

Scottish “grit” is too often a product: deprivation as vibe, hardship as tourism. Chris Kohler[...]

Author Insight: Graeme Armstrong and the new Scottish coming-of-age story that won’t translate itself for comfort

Armstrong’s The Young Team won’t translate itself into polite comfort. The Scots voice isn’t flavour;[...]