The cover of Carrie's book, Small Town Joy, and two review extracts. 

"An absolute treat of a read... a mixtape lovingly assembled by a friend's cool, knowledgeable older sister." - Gutter Magazine
"Her exploration of queer music's escapist, visionary powers brings joy, not in small neasures." - The Wire
  • Following on from my earlier post, The Times’ story about university places for care experienced people has grown worse. Something I didn’t spot in the original was the way the piece drew a distinction between “disadvantaged” pupils and “bright” pupils, as if the latter couldn’t possibly include the former. Again, the word choice is significant.… [more]

  • This week, Scottish universities unveiled an important new initiative: people who’ve been in the care system will be guaranteed the offer of a university place if they meet new minimum entry requirements. It should double the number of care-experienced students to around 600 people. It’s designed to address some of the issues that don’t affect… [more]

  • Yesterday I linked to a story about a man and a very strange sequence of events – please read it before reading this, or it’ll spoil the story for you. The story asked, “Is this the most gullible man in America?” but some readers are wondering if perhaps we’re the gullible ones too. The story,… [more]

  • I read this at the weekend in New York magazine, and I was open-mouthed for most of it. It’s a story that starts bad, gets worse and then goes rapidly downhill from there. On March 7, 2015, Harvard Law professor Bruce Hay, then 52, was in Tags Hardware in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near his home, when… [more]

  • A beautiful, sad piece by CJ Hauser in The Paris Review. There are worse things than not receiving love. There are sadder stories than this. There are species going extinct, and a planet warming. I told myself: who are you to complain, you with these frivolous extracurricular needs? [more]

  • I was having a bad day on Saturday so I went to the pub to cheer myself up. It wasn’t entirely successful. First, a young woman who’d been standing next to me at the bar heard me speak, turned, and stared at me with open disgust. A few minutes later a drunk thirtysomething man put… [more]

  • A lovely piece by Leslie Jamison about attending weddings. Everyone talks about weddings as beginnings but the truth is they are also endings. They give a horizon of closure to things that have been slowly dissolving for years: flirtations, friendships, shared innocence, shared rootlessness, shared loneliness. [more]

  • I’ve written before about the toothless press regulator IPSO, which was set up by the press specifically for the purpose of not regulating the press. To take just one recent example, IPSO found that when The Times makes up quotes, doing so doesn’t breach the rules on accuracy. The ruling was on a story about… [more]

  • Jess Brammar writes about another curse of the internet: reply guys. …alongside the straightforward abuse that is by now publicly acknowledged – and to the majority of the population, wholly unacceptable – there is something more complex, less offensive, but incredibly exhausting nonetheless. Sometimes it’s so subtle you barely notice it but it’s always there, always… [more]

  • Another day, another great piece on Longreads. This one’s by Laura Lippman, best-selling crime writer, in Longreads’ series about ageing. I think when life gives you petit lemons, you should make lemonade — and refuse to share it with people who treat you rudely. [more]

Read me in books

My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.

My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.

I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.

A photo of the book Carrie Kills A Man.