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Guest Essays:
New: Duncan McLean on Exceedingly Good Novels
 In the wake of BBC's Big Read, the novelist offers some advice on how to approach lists of "classics" for best sanity and best digestion... exceedingly good.
Peter Kravitz - introduction to contemporary Scottish Literature.
 The Picador
Book of Contemporary Scottish Literature
was selected by Peter Kravitz, himself a primary encourager in
the early publishing days of some of the best-known of the writers
in contemporary Scotland. He also wrote the introduction for
this volume, an introduction which should be of interest to anyone
enthused or bewildered by recent fiction in Britain.
James Kelman on Noam
Chomsky and the Scottish Tradition of Common Sense.
 "Some
people find anathema the phrase "distinctive Scottish Tradition
in Philosophy". Just the phrase alone. It seems to drive
them nuts. I'm talking about some Scottish people. And as for
"Democratic Intellect", well, they just cannot handle
that one at all." An essay first delivered in 1990 under
the auspices of the Free University at Govan, in the presence
of Geroge Davie and Noam Chomsky.
Jenny Turner - LRB review of Scottish short stories.
 "Scotland, for all that it is changing, has still a massively macho culture." In "Scottish Men and Scottish Women", Jenny Turner discusses the first apearance of two collections of short stories, The Burn and Blood in this essay from 1991.
Glenda Norquay - Fraudulent
Mooching - essay on Foreign Parts
 "For Galloway's women, and Scottish women generally, a more positive reading of 'fraudulent mooching' seems a welcome alternative to the discourses of national identity by which we have been bound."
From Contemporary Scottish Women Writers (Ed. Eileen
Christianson and Alison Lumsden, published by Edinburgh
University Press.)
Duncan
McLean on Knut
Hamsun and his relevance to contemporary writers.
 Duncan McLean is a key contemporary Scottish writer of subversive power and humour, whose works include Blackden, Bucket of Tongues, Bunker Man and Lone Star Swing. Here, the extraordinary Hamsun is written about with McLean's characteristic warmth in an essay explaining the influence Hamsun has thrown on McLean's own work, ideas and work style.
Josiane Paccaud Huguet on fragmentation in
Blood.
 "It is language in excess of meaning ... that produces the disease in the imaginary that narrative attempts to cure." Josiane Paccaud Huguet, of the Université Stendahl-Grenoble III, on recurring themes and metaphors in Galloway's collection.
Tina Makhota
on translating
The Trick is to Keep Breathing
 A technical essay of interest to translators by Tina Makhota, Slovenia's foremost translator of Scottish and Irish literary work. It was first given as a lecture at a Cross-Cultureal Conference in Zagreb, 26-28 February 1998. Tina lives in Ljubljana.
Marian Popescu: A Romaninan Playwright on theatre after Ceausescu.
 This essay was given at a conference on writing in Targu Mures, Transylvania, in April 2001 by Romaninan writer, Marian Popsescu. He is he author of several books on theatre, a theatre critic, translator, editor and Professor at The University of Theatre and Film Bucharest and the University "Lucian Blaga" Sibiu.
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