Why hullo there!
Happy New Year to all our readers, contributors, subscribers, and the rest. Thanks for all your support in 2010, and we look forward to 2011 with great excitement.
BBC Radio 4 has recently been showcasing new Scottish writing on their afternoon reading slot. You’ll have to be quick to hear them all, as they are only held in the archive for seven days each, but here are the links. Click the title of the story you want to hear to be taken to the website. Enjoy!
Fear in a Hat
A shy schoolgirl fears the worst when she attends a compulsory religious retreat with her catty classmates.
Read by Sally Reid
Written by Nicola White
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
This story is available until January 11th.
Nicola White lives on a peninsula in Argyll, between a picturesque sea loch and an MOD arms depot. A former art curator and documentary producer, she turned her back on the city and steady wages a few years ago. Since then she has been invited to read her work at the Blue Room, Newcastle and the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin. In 2008 she received a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.
The Last Cup
Set on a windswept Western Isle, a kindly old fisherman and his stern minister find a poignant sliver of common ground over tea from a chipped china cup.
Read by Matthew Zajac.
Written by Merryn Glover.
Producer: Patricia Hitchcock
This story is available until January 12th.
Merryn Glover is a playwright and author of short stories and received a Scottish Arts Council bursary. She has written plays for BBC Radio Scotland.
Matryoshka
A spoilt princess craves possession of the one thing she can’t have in this new spin on a familiar tale.
Read by Nicola Jo Cully
Written by Kirsty Logan
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
This story is available until January 13th.
Kirsty Logan graduated in 2009 from Glasgow University’s Creative Writing MLitt; over the next year she won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust, the Gillian Purvis Award, and third place in the Bridport Prize. She regularly performs her own work and recently read at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Her short fiction has been published in around 80 anthologies and literary magazines. Kirsty is currently working on her first novel and a short story collection.
From Glasgow to Saturn 