Hyperbole? One day he may well write a comic with a hero of that name, but when you consider his Ultimates series was the basis for the...

Nora Chassler is a writer who I first read in the 2010 short story collection The Year of Open Doors, a literary compendium which...

I don’t wish to be cruel, or at least I don’t enjoy it, but for a few years now the Aye Write! Book Festival has felt like it had lost...

Artists referenced include Salif Keita, This Mortal Coil, The Ink Spots, The Cocteau Twins and, more than anyone else, Can and Holger...

The best short stories are snapshots of people’s lives, leaving no doubt that there was a life before and that there will be (hopefully)...

Alice Thompson’s The Existential Detective and Burnt Island could be described as pulp fiction, but they are also two of the best...

*This review first appeared in Issue 15 of The Bottle Imp. Ewan Morrison departed from the traditional novel to great effect with 2012’s...

The latest podcast is one of two halves. In the first, Ali talks to writer Zoe Strachan, (wearing her editor’s hat), about all things Out...

When Scots Whay Hae! reviewed James Robertson’s And The Land Lay Still it was noted that Scotland hadn’t produced enough epic literature...

It’s a question which Christopher Whyte, whose story ‘Unfamiliar Rooms’ also features in Out There, posed in the introduction to his 1985...

In the latest edition of the online literary magazine The Bottle Imp various people were asked to name their best books of 2014, and...

Summerhall Arts Venue in Edinburgh to talk to Ron Butlin, one of Scotland most acclaimed writers, and one of Ali’s favourites, as he will...

There are few things in this world better than a carefully crafted short story. They never outstay their welcome; simply make their mark...

One of the biggest problems with the downsizing of newspapers, magazines and journals is the thinning out of great journalists and...

Although I’m sure there are are some who would disagree, attending an author’s reading of a book you are going to review is always...

The latest podcast is yet a further celebration of all things Stevenson on the day of his birth, as if that were needed. By now I hope...

Alan Bissett sets his novel Pack Men in Manchester on the 14th May 2008 when thousands of Rangers fans descended from Scotland to take...

This has been a difficult review to write. Not because the book in question isn’t good. It’s very good. It’s the new biography of The...