Alan Bissett @ Citizens Theatre, 9-13 Feb

Performance has, in recent years, become increasingly important to the 34-year-old novelist. “One of the things you have to do when you’re a writer is read at festivals, schools and all sorts of places. You’re on a stage, people are looking at you, therefore, it’s show. You have a duty to make this a live experience, not just somebody mumbling their words aloud.”

Having been involved in 2007’s Ballads of the Book, the novelist added spoken word to a track for Malcolm Middleton, nailing opening slots for acts like The Vaselines and Y’All Is Fantasy Island, as well as continuing to run regular literature and comedy evening, DisCoMboBuLAtE, alongside Magi Gibson and Iain Macpherson. “We’ve all been to really fucking boring, wanky poetry performances and it’s just torture, so I didn’t want to inflict that on anybody,” Bissett explains.

For those waiting for another “Bissett” novel, Pack Men, the follow-up to sophomore outing Boyracers, is due in March. Until then, the author has found a spiritual home in theatre, with another play running at Òran Mór in April and a potential stage version of Death of a Ladies Man' to boot. “They’re saying, ‘Bring us your writers!’, and you can go as far out there as you like. They want something that’s radical and challenging and new,” he says. “When I come back for book five, I’ll want it to be something pretty special. It’ll tell me when it wants me back. Until then, I’m just disappearing on to the stage.” [Lauren Mayberry]