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“a lack of spaces for literary criticism”, she considers Scotland “a wonderful place” and has received “an enormous amount of support” from the country’s writers and bookshops. She praises indies Typewronger Books, Golden Hare Books, Lighthouse Bookshop, Portobello Bookshop and Argonaut Books for their work to “uphold and nurture the Scotish literary scene”.


Filmmaker and writer Etienne Kubwabo,


the creator of comic Beats of War, which features Scotland’s first Black superhero, has been similarly impressed by the country’s “incredible” cultural community since he moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Glasgow as a refugee. He describes it as “a welcoming country” that is “blessed with interesting writers and creators and the support given to this industry”, singling out BGCP Comic Con, run by the team at BHP Comics, as being a particularly nurturing space.


ubwabo says that living in Scotland has “definitely opened my imagination more”, expanding: “I came to Scotland when I was 19 years old and the more that I have fallen in love with this place, the more it has given me inspiration to create and write stories in both film and books.”


A “freeing up” of mental space is just one of the benefits that


boundaries”, naming Helen McClory, Lyndsey Croal, Callum McSorley, L R Lam, Katalina Wat and Andrés Ordorica among these. Camilla Grudova, the Edinburgh-based Canadian author of Children of Paradise and The Doll’s Alphabet, is also inspired by her peers in her new home country, including Kirst Logan, Chris Kohler, Anna Walsh, Heather Parry, Heather Palmer and Shola von Reinhold, as well as the late celebrated Scotish writer and artist Alasdair Gray. She feels there are “a lot of exciting, new things happening that aren’t in the wider consciousness yet”, including Extra Teeth magazine and “challenging” publishers such as Charco Press and 404 Ink.


AUTHOR ETIENNE KUBWABO MADE GLASGOW HIS HOME AS A REFUGEE


Though Grudova is concerned by the low pay offered by some arts festivals, the fact that “venues are not doing enough to feature young and up-and-coming artists” and


author Elle Nash has felt since moving from a small town south of Denver, Colorado, to Glasgow. This shift was inspired by a visit to the cit with the UK publisher of her début novel Animals Eat Each Other, 404 Ink, following her appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. “The cit was so cool, I knew I wanted to live here, but wasn’t sure when that would happen. After the pandemic hit, I had a sudden realisation that life was too short to wait.” Following the move, Nash has enjoyed Scotland’s “extremely vibrant” cultural landscape. She is a fan of “transgressive” author Chris Kelso, whose first novel The Black Dog Eats the Cit was just reissued by West Vine Press, and 404 Ink’s Inkling series. Like her fellow creatives, she commends the amount of support offered to the country’s literature from organisations such Creative Scotland, Publishing Scotland and the Glasgow Zine Library, as well as events including the Aye Write festival and Scotish Book Trust’s Book Week. She adds: “There is so much that Scotland’s cultural scene has to offer, and you can see that people have worked hard to invest in and grow the arts here. It’s so varied—from the conservatoire to ballet to theatre to film, and then, of course, to literature—the arts scene is a gem.”


5


[There is] such a rich well of


inspiration, from Scotland’s natural beauty to the strong anarchist and queer political communities... It all informs my work Eris Young


CAMILLA GRUDOVA HAILED SCOTLAND’S CREATIVE SCENE


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