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For me, Glasgow was significant to depict because it completely changed my life and I completely fell in love with the city and I wanted to show that sort of view from Finlay as well.
Margaret McDonald’s class action
This year’s Carnegies Medal for Writing went to the youngest author in the award’s history, when Margaret McDonald’s Glasgow Boys was announced in summer.
A DEBUT novel grounded in the city it shares its name with, the story draws from Margaret’s own working class roots and celebrates the tight-knit communities and positive influences that she grew up with.
Margaret was raised in East Kilbride, which she describes as a “kind of village town” on the periphery of Glasgow. And both places play their own roles in Glasgow Boys, East Kilbride a home for Banjo, and Glasgow a place of growth and opportunity for Finlay.
Margaret, who went to university in the city, says: “Glasgow Boys actually wasn’t my title, it was Faber’s. I’m so delighted that they felt like the representation of Glasgow was a character in its own right. To me, Glasgow has such a personality, it’s completely its own world, it has its own thing going that you won’t get anywhere else. Having the experience of going to university and seeing all these incredible tall historic buildings, the bustling energy of the city, and with so much for people to do there meant it was significant to for me depict Glasgow because it did completely change my life.” Being around that creative hub provided inspiration as a writer, with Margaret joining the university poetry society and the Wee Story Society. She says: “[The poetry society] was such a great place to meet people and to discuss the love of writing, the love of literature. I also joined the Wee Story Society, which is brilliant. We got to read out our work and were amidst people that are like- minded. Being able to get that positive feedback really does revolutionise your life as a writer because it does give you the confidence to keep sharing it, which is one of the hardest things.
“It’s amazing to get good feedback, but it really, really is difficult, especially when you put so much of yourself on the page. It can be very tempting to just
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say, well, you know, that was an experience that I enjoyed writing, but it’s never seeing the light of day. “But I’m very, deeply glad that I have given Glasgow Boys that light of day because it has been overwhelmingly amazing to have everyone connect with it. For me, Glasgow was significant to depict because it completely changed my life and
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