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
  • I did my first ever literary event last night at the University of Glasgow as part of Publishing Scotland’s Creative Conversations series. To say I was terrified would be an understatement. I barely slept in the days before, and during the day itself I managed to break two glasses and prang one of my neighbours’… [more]

  • Just an admin note: I’ve reverted the blog to its previous template because the new one mangled some characters and did weird things with quoted text. It’s not quite right yet so please excuse the dust. [more]

  • A typically incisive piece by Parker Molloy on the censorious clowns who claim that legitimate criticism of what they say and write is the same as the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie. That is the problem people have with the “cancel culture” discourse. It’s selective, it flattens important distinctions between horrific acts (beheadings and physical… [more]

  • I posted something on Twitter last night that I could post pretty much any time, any day, in response to someone doing something utterly vile: trans people have been trying to warn you about this person, this organisation or this publication for years. [more]

  • I was delighted to be a small part of BBC Scotland’s new podcast, The Rise and Fall of T in the Park. It’s about more than just the festival itself; it’s about the impact it had on the Scottish music scene and on Scotland as a destination for touring bands. I’m in there talking about… [more]

  • With crushing predictability, the faux-feminists in the UK press have decided that the real villain in the decades-long plot to overturn Roe vs Wade en route to establishing a Christian theocracy is… trans women. The argument, if you can call it that, is simple: trans men wanted to be included in discussions of reproductive healthcare;… [more]

  • There’s a really nice piece in National Geographic about historians documenting the lives of trans people, and in addition to being really interesting it’s a much-needed corrective to the oft-spoken belief that trans people were invented in 2015. There’s ample evidence of gender variance throughout human history. Among the earliest are accounts of galaand galli,… [more]

  • I enjoyed this post by Max Rashbrooke on writer James Patterson and podcaster Joe Rogan, both of whom claim to be oppressed by woke activists. These are perilous days indeed for a near-billionaire author who outsells Stephen King and Dan Brown combined, and for his fellow victim, the host of a podcast downloaded 200 million… [more]

  • I’m delighted to reveal the cover for my book, Carrie Kills A Man, which you can pre-order directly from my lovely publisher here. The cover, by the hugely talented Wolf, is just perfect. You have no idea how hard it’s been to keep this secret. [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.