New Writing: From Scottish Book Trust’s Writer Development Programme

If vibrant, diverse and eclectic new writing is what you’re after, then this latest collection from the Scottish Book Trust makes for essential reading. This slim volume is brimming with as yet little known talent, and features everything from novel extracts written in Scots vernacular so faithfully transcribed you can almost hear it, to lines of poetry that stop you in your tracks. Many featured writers make their print debut between these pages and there is a particular sort of thrill to be found in reading a promising extract from a novel that is currently unfinished.

Samuel Tongue’s poem Why I Was So Bad at Clay-Pigeon Shooting stands out in its poignancy and vividness: ‘the shotgun was an extension / of my ability to crush the world / in gunpowder and brass, and the recoil / went deeper than the soft socket of my shoulder.’

The Scottish Book Trust works to promote a love of reading and literature in Scotland, and to support the country’s fledgling authors. The featured writers hail from the Highlands and the Islands, the country and the city, offering a heterogeneous set of voices we are sure to hear more of in the coming years. [Rosie Hopegood]