Aye Write 2025: Scottish Fiction

9 November, 2025, 4.15 p.m.

Scottish Fiction, Modern & Contemporary Fiction, Crime & Mystery

Margaret McDonald, Callum McSorley and Tom Newlands

The Mitchell Library, North Street, Glasgow G3 7DN

Author Martin Stewart chairs a discussion between three talented young Scottish writers, each with an award-winning debut novel to their name.

Tom Newlands

Tom Newlands won the McKitterick Prize for Only Here, Only Now, a mid-90s coming-of-age tale that follows 14-year-old Cora Mowatt, stuck on a seaside council estate full of dafties, old folk and seagulls. Drawn from life but written with riotous imagination, Tom explores what it means to grow up in a forgotten corner of Scotland and dream of a life that feels out of reach.

Margaret McDonald

Margaret McDonald won the Carnegie Medal for Glasgow Boys, a tender story of young masculinity, friendship and growing up in foster care. Finlay is studying for a nursing degree, against all the odds. But coming straight from care means he has no support network. Banjo is trying to settle in with his new foster family, but he can’t forget all that has happened, and his anger and fear keep boiling over. Can the pair let go of the past before it drags them under?

Callum McSorley

Callum McSorley won the McIlvanney Prize for Squeaky Clean and follows it up with the raw, darkly comic Paperboy. DCI Alison McCoist is back: newly promoted and even less popular. Chuck Gardner is the proud owner of a confidential paper-shredding business and a serious betting habit. When Chuck finds some scandalous paperwork and McCoist investigates a corpse under a flyover, they’re sucked into a deadly stramash of gangland wars and police corruption.

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