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I’ve been keeping this secret for ages until it felt like I’d burst, but now I can go public: I’m appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year in stellar company. Kirsty Logan, Szilvia Monar and I will be talking about our memoirs and the minefield of modern parenting. The event is on at… [more]
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Yesterday, a UK court jailed a woman for taking abortion pills shortly after the UK limit during lockdown, when normal medical care was unavailable. There’s a great deal to be angry about here, not least the complete absence of the “protect women” crowd when it comes to protecting women’s reproductive rights. But there’s also a… [more]
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My GP thinks it’s highly likely that I have ADHD, which I contracted by watching TikTok videos, having friends with blue hair and reading about Critical Race Theory. *sideways look* I’ll no doubt write more about it some other time, but the tl;dr version is that my winning personality may actually be a neurological condition.… [more]
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I wrote about moral panics in my book: When I was younger, there were moral panics over heavy metal records and the board game Dungeons & Dragons; the former allegedly contained backwards messages to worship Satan and/or kill yourself, and the latter was accused of pretty much everything. Similar panics occurred around video games, the… [more]
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I’m very surprised and absolutely delighted to be included in Audible’s Pride List of Queer Storytelling, which has been created in association with LGBT+ writers’ organisation Out On The Page. Featuring recommendations from 42 LGBT+ writers and poets, it’s an excellent collection of must-read and must-listen books. I can’t believe I’m in the same list… [more]
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It’s well known – well, well known outside anti-trans circles – that trans people were targeted by the Nazis; the famous book-burning photograph that pretty much everybody in the world has seen was taken in 1933 when Nazi thugs looted the Institute of Sexology and burnt its research into trans and gender non-conforming people. However,… [more]
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Casey Newton is one of the smartest people writing about technology, and this piece – the platforms give up on 2020 lies – is absolutely chilling. It’s about social networks’ reversal of their disinformation policies and their new unwillingness to censor dangerous content. As ever, Elon Musk is in the mix. One function Musk now… [more]
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According to Media Matters, in the last seven days Fox News has given airtime to two stories about protecting children. The first story was the false allegation that Target was selling “satanist kids’ clothes” as part of its Pride merchandise. Fox News gave that two hours and twelve minutes. The second story was the horrific… [more]
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The UK edition of The Guardian and its Sunday sister The Observer is openly transphobic and effectively the house magazine of the “gender critical” mob; as Trans Writes reports, during its recent diversity and inclusion events a group of senior writers and editors discussed their plans to push anti-trans narratives “fearlessly” in front of an… [more]
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The idea that parental love is unconditional is just that: an idea. The reality is often much more harsh, especially for LGBT+ kids: although by most estimates only around one in 10 people are LGBT+, nearly one-fifth of all young homeless people are LGBT+. 69% of those kids have experienced violence, abuse or rejection from… [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.
