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Last night I played a couple of songs at an open mic night. I’ve been doing that a lot lately, and one of the songs I play is a very sad but also hopeful song called A Moment of Clarity. The song’s sung to somebody at their lowest ebb and it seems to connect with… [more]
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There’s a fascinating piece in the Huffington Post about a programme in Californian prisons that aims to cut the reoffending rate. Its focus? Toxic masculinity. The former inmate is a facilitator of a prison rehabilitation program that teaches men about gender roles and how ingrained ideas of masculinity have contributed to their violent crimes. GRIP,… [more]
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The reason my wee face is there alongside the superbly talented musicians Elena Piras and Rosie Bans is because we’re the Advocacy and Activism working group of Scottish Women Inventing Music, SWiM for short. If you’re a woman in music, we’d love to have you on board. The organisation is all about putting women centre… [more]
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For the second time in just a few months, my friends and I are mourning another life lost to suicide. Too many people are struggling with mental health and suicidal thoughts. If you’re one of them, please speak to somebody. The world is a better place with you in it, and can be a better… [more]
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The culture wars over trans people have made their way to the philosophers’ community, with some high-profile anti-trans people wrapping their views in philosophical arguments. Unfortunately, Luke Roelofs writes, those arguments don’t make sense. This is a long read, but it’s interesting if you’d like to understand why issues such as policing bathrooms are so… [more]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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.
