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
  • Buzzfeed UK has compared various newspapers’ stories about Meghan Markle with the same papers’ stories about Kate Middleton. The differences are striking. [more]

  • My favourite comedian isn’t pulling any punches. [Jeremy Clarkson’s and Boris Johnson’s] careers have flourished by exploiting the notion that they are lone voices of sanity against a politically correct snowflake cabal intent on silencing normal blokes like them. Their comedy counterpart Ricky Gervais has managed to monetise this notion spectacularly, saying the things that… [more]

  • The New York Times has published a detailed investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s empire, arguing that “Murdoch and his children have topped governments on two continents and destabilised the most important democracy on Earth.” It’s a long read but here are some key claims: Fox News has long exerted a gravitational pull on the Republican Party… [more]

  • This the astonishing Ndlovu Youth Choir performing the MOR hit Africa on America’s Got Talent. As someone who doesn’t watch TV, it had passed me by – so when I heard it in a Radio 4 programme this morning, it hit me like a truck full of sunshine and flowers. I like the song anyway,… [more]

  • Owl Stefania writes in the i Paper about the singular “they” pronoun, voted word of the year and word of the decade, and pronouns more generally. Pronouns themselves might not seem important to people who’ve always been comfortable with theirs, but for non-binary people (and transgender people in general), pronouns carry a lot of weight.… [more]

  • What’s in this picture? Is it (a) a tasty-looking meal? Or is it (b), an Orwellian nightmare pushed by sinister “vegan extremists”? Let’s ask Sun columnist Dan Wooton, who tweeted the picture and wrote: This is the plant based meal being given to all guests at the Golden Globe Awards this year. No option with… [more]

  • Over at Ask Polly, Heather Havrilesky responds to a reader who’s finding it hard to find joy any more.  Engage with this crisis instead of trying to cut it off. Let these feelings in instead of blaming yourself for them. Be more patient with your own sadness. And look for joy everywhere you can, every… [more]

  • Katelyn Burns writes about the Maya Forstater case for The New Republic. Cases like this—which pit the actual lives of trans people against the beliefs of somebody who decided to test her colleagues’ patience by posting over 150 anti-trans tweets in a single week—are a win-win for anti-trans activists. If they prevail, they have a… [more]

  • Last night I performed at a small open mic night, doing something I’ve never done before: I sang and played to a small audience without amplification. There was a PA there, but I didn’t use it. It wasn’t planned: the battery in my guitar was flat so its pickups weren’t sending any signal to the… [more]

  • The picture above is of the Impossible Whopper, a meat-free burger from Burger King. Like many vegetable, seed and nut-based products, it contains phytoestrogens – structures that are similar, but different to, the estrogen in people. Here comes the internet. The above claims, and many like them, are currently circulating on social media. Let’s not… [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.