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Association for Scottish Literature
@asls.org.uk
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Educational charity promoting the reading, writing, teaching & study of Scotland's literature & languages, past & present.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · Aug 27
A CHAOS OF LIGHT
New Writing Scotland 43
Ed. Kirstin Innes, Chris Powici & Niall O’Gallagher

“writing that unsettles and challenges, that questions assumptions…A rich, boisterous, tender, charming, angry, sorrowful, gleeful mix”

Available now from all good bookshops!
💙📚
asls.org.uk/publications...
New Writing Scotland 43
Edited by Kirstin Innes, Chris Powici & Niall O’Gallagher Published in: Paperback, 184 pages By: Association for Scottish Literature, Glasgow, August 2025 Price: £9.95 ISBN: 9781906841669 Cover image…
asls.org.uk
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
gnofhorror.com
Ancient Greek Fates meet Shetland’s Witches in Kate Macdonald’s The Shetland Witch. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 . 🔗👇 #ShetlandWitch #Folklore

Check these three books from @kateem.bsky.social along with a potted history on Shetland Witches

gnofhorror.com/the-shetland...
February 13, 2026 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
agrayarchive.bsky.social
It’s World Radio Day! 📻
One of Alasdair Gray’s early radio plays, “Mr Meikle – An Epilogue,” from Ten Tales Tall and True (1993), aired on BBC Radio 4 in 2004. It reflects on a teacher who shaped his literary path and love of Glasgow.
February 13, 2026 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
orkat3.bsky.social
#FindsFriday
The Cairns Character!
Discovered in a pit at the #IronAge #Broch site of The Cairns on the island of South Ronaldsay, #Orkney. He or She was carved from a beach pebble around 2,000 years ago.

📸 mine
February 13, 2026 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
suewilkesauthor.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Robert Burns' family home to be recreated in Ellisland Farm restoration
Burns designed and built Ellisland Farm near Dumfries in 1788 and it is largely unchanged.
www.bbc.co.uk
February 13, 2026 at 4:23 PM
asls.org.uk
It’s a platonic relationship
February 13, 2026 at 5:47 PM
asls.org.uk
I, an apparent adult of some considerable vintage, try to make sure every plate gets a turn on top of the stack because otherwise it’s not fair, but I don’t have it in me to give a stuff about Claude’s feelings
February 13, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
luathpress.bsky.social
New books from Luath this February! 📚✨

Goodbye Day Job by Barbara Henderson: zurl.co/reXX6

Iona with Love by Barbara Sellars: zurl.co/cckwu

A Gray Playbook by Alasdair Gray (new edition): zurl.co/d9GQ0

Which one will you read first?
Goodbye Day Job: Inspiring Journeys to Follow Your Passion – Luath Press
Discover inspiring stories of individuals who left their day jobs to pursue their passions. Barbara Henderson's book offers motivation and practical wisdom for your career shift.
zurl.co
February 13, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
maisiechanwrites.bsky.social
LIVERPOOL!

I'm doing a free Tiger Warrior event at Liverpool's Central Library on Sat 21st Feb 11am- 12pm

Just turn up! I'll be reading from my Tiger Warriors and we'll be doing some drawing!

cultureliverpool.co.uk/events/maisi...
Maisie Chan - Chinese New Year Workshop at Central Library - Culture Liverpool
Join award-winning children's author Maisie Chan as she talks about her series the Tiger Warrior which feature the Zodiac animals.
cultureliverpool.co.uk
February 13, 2026 at 2:12 PM
asls.org.uk
& here’s @thehubble101.bsky.social on GAY HUNTER
prospectiveculture.wordpress.com/2024/07/30/r...
Road to Glasgow 2024: Gay Hunter by J. Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon) (Polygon 1989) – originally published in 1934.
Part of my series of posts on Scottish SFF in the run-up to this year’s WorldCon. (I should note that I’m going to continue the series after the Worldcon – ‘The Road from Glasgow 2024’!! – as there…
prospectiveculture.wordpress.com
February 13, 2026 at 2:18 PM
asls.org.uk
Here’s @thehubble101.bsky.social on THREE GO BACK …
prospectiveculture.wordpress.com/2024/07/26/r...
Road to Glasgow 2024: Three Go Back by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Polygon 1995) – originally published in 1932 as Three Go Back by J. Leslie Mitchell.
Part of my series of posts on Scottish SFF in the run-up to this year’s WorldCon. (I should note that I’m going to continue the series after the Worldcon – ‘The Road from Glasgow 2024’!! – as there…
prospectiveculture.wordpress.com
February 13, 2026 at 2:18 PM
asls.org.uk
Just thought of 2 books by James Leslie Mitchell, better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon: THREE GO BACK (an airship travels 25,000 years into the past) and GAY HUNTER (a young, female, American archaeologist & two ghastly English fascists are flung 20,000 years forward into a post-apocalyptic future)…
February 13, 2026 at 2:18 PM
asls.org.uk
The International Companion to Lewis Grassic Gibbon
ed. Scott Lyall

The best contemporary guide to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s/James Leslie Mitchell’s literature, politics, life, & work – available in print or online via @projectmuse.bsky.social
10/10
asls.org.uk/publications...
International Companion 1
Edited by Scott Lyall Paperback, 192 pages. Scottish Literature International, 2015 £24.95 / €29.95 / $29.95 ISBN 978-1-908980-13-7 Order from our bookshop Download from Project Muse Order from…
asls.org.uk
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
Prof @scottlyall.bsky.social discusses SUNSET SONG – a talk given at our Schools Conference in 2015
9/10
www.youtube.com/watch?v=84NM...
Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song
YouTube video by ASL
www.youtube.com
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
SUNSET SONG

Currently on the iPlayer: the digitally restored 1971 BBC adaptation of the first part of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s SCOTS QUAIR trilogy about a young girl’s intellectual & sexual development in rural north-east Scotland just before WW1
8/10
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
Sunset Song
The first part of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy about a young girl's intellectual and sexual development within a repressive peasant community in Scotland just before the First World War.
www.bbc.co.uk
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
Why Everybody Needs Smeddum

“The heroine, Meg Menzies, is Gibbon’s answer to Austen’s Mrs Bennet. In fact, she works as a kind of anti-Mrs Bennet”

—Graeme Trousdale on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic #shortstory “Smeddum”
7/10
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2007/05/why-...
Why Everybody Needs Smeddum - The Bottle Imp
Lewis Grassic Gibbon‘s Smeddum, the tale of the Menzies family in rural north-east Scotland, is a beautifully crafted, and really satisfying short story. The word ‘smeddum’ means ‘spirit’, ‘determinat...
www.thebottleimp.org.uk
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
“And so with the moderns”: The Role of the Revolutionary Writer and the Mythicization of History in J. Leslie Mitchell’s SPARTACUS

@scottlyall.bsky.social, CLOTHO 4/2 (2022)
6/10
journals.uni-lj.si/clotho/artic...
Keywords: Spartacus, J. Leslie Mitchell (1901–35), Lewis Grassic Gibbon, communism, myth-history Abstract The focus of this article is J. Leslie Mitchell’s Spartacus (1933), his fictional representation of the slave rebellion in ancient Rome led by the eponymous gladiator. The article begins by examining Mitchell’s contribution to debates over the role of the revolutionary writer in Left Review in the mid-1930s and his place in the British Left in this era, before going on to survey the ways in which the figure of Spartacus and the German Spartacists are represented across Mitchell’s oeuvre. It then explores key source material utilized in the writing of the novel, as well as outlining comparisons between Mitchell’s representation of Spartacus and those of his fellow novelists Howard Fast and Arthur Koestler. Including close readings of Spartacus and informed by archival research and previously unpublished manuscript items, the article argues that at the same time as denouncing the cruelties of Roman rule, Spartacus also signals Mitchell’s passionate opposition to what he considered the violent histories of oppression suffered by the commons of the earth of all times, culminating in the capitalist crisis of Mitchell’s own period in the 1930s. Mitchell creates this effect of historical simultaneity by writing a work of myth-history – as opposed to historical realism or political propaganda – that employs the utopian legend of the Golden Age to inspire radical dissent against modern deprivation.
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
I have always thought that the first sentence of James Leslie Mitchell’s SPARTACUS is up there with some of the great opening lines in literature …
#Rome #HistoricalFiction
💙📚
When Kleon heard the news from Capua he rose early one morning, being a literatus and unchained, crept to the room of his Master, stabbed him in the throat, mutilated that Master’s body even as his own had been mutilated: and so fled from Rome with a stained dagger in his sleeve and a copy of THE REPUBLIC of Plato hidden in his breast.
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
“SPARTACUS will be seen as one of his most enduring achievements, still vivid, still experimental, still burning with the anger he felt at the barbarous events of history”

Ian Campbell discusses James Leslie Mitchell’s brutal & unflinching novel SPARTACUS (1933)
💙📚
5/10
asls.org.uk/james-leslie...
Book cover: James Leslie Mitchell SPARTACUS The cover is a stained red. The illustration, rendered in greys and black, shows the head and upper body of a stylised ancient warrior wearing a red cloak an angular, crested helmet
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
SUNSET SONG: a Scottish Gift to German Readers

Regina Erich compares the original German #translation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A SCOTS QUAIR trilogy, published in the GDR between 1970 & 1986, with its more recent republication in a unified Germany
4/10
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2019/12/suns...
Sunset Song: A Scottish Gift to German Readers - The Bottle Imp
Scottish literature enjoys a wide international readership. Many Scottish authors, whether creators of classic novels or contemporary writers, have been translated into foreign languages. Germany is n...
www.thebottleimp.org.uk
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
“Not only did he invent a sentence structure that works like breath through the body of the reader, & a kind of Scottish English that’s simultaneously rich & spare, but [A SCOTS QUAIR is] a formally stunning & cunning work of art”

—Ali Smith, writing in 2019
3/10
www.theguardian.com/books/2019/j...
Ali Smith: ‘Toni Morrison’s writing changes my life every time I read it’
The novelist on Muriel Spark, Katherine Mansfield and learning to read with the Beatles
www.theguardian.com
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
“The ambiguity of authority & reliability in narration, in Scots or English, is central to Hogg, Galt, Stevenson, many others, but in Gibbon’s trilogy it is utterly deconstructed”

—Alan Riach: the influence of Gibbon on contemporary Scottish literature
💙📚
2/10
www.thenational.scot/news/1555031...
Lewis Grassic Gibbon: Uncovering the morning star
THE major achievement of Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell, 1901-35) is the trilogy of novels Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933) and…
www.thenational.scot
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
James Leslie Mitchell (1901–1935), better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, was born on this day, 13 Feb. Author of SUNSET SONG – & many other titles from historical to science fiction – he is one of the most important Scottish writers of the 20th century.
A 🎂 🧵 …
💙📚
1/10
digital.nls.uk/learning/sun...
A black-and-white photograph in profile of James Leslie Mitchell, also known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, c. 1920–1930, by an unknown photographer. A young man, with short, trimmed, swept-back hair and a slightly pensive expression.
February 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
asls.org.uk
A single quaver
of loosening ice
extends across the silence,
revives the air
with the almost forgotten song
of snow melting to water…

—Gael Turnbull, “A single quaver…”
published in A WINTER JOURNEY (Pig Press, 1987)
#poem #poetry
www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/single-...
“A single quaver…” by Gael Turnbull A single quaver of loosening ice extends across the silence, revives the air with the almost forgotten song of snow melting to water and of water flowing to reaffirm as winter’s claw holds a little longer, although what was is strong, what will be’s stronger.
February 13, 2026 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
booksfromscotland.bsky.social
Congrats to all the authors and publishers on the longlist! 🎺🎺🎺
February 13, 2026 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Association for Scottish Literature
societyofauthors.bsky.social
An important message beautifully presented by writer/illustrator and SoA Fellow Sarah McIntyre.
A handwritten letter to Sarah McIntyre's MP. It asks him to stand up for the UK's children's book illustrators and their copyright and is illustrated with a picture of a serious-looking mouse holding a large pencil.
February 13, 2026 at 10:01 AM