Writer, Filmmaker, Mother, Grandmother
I was really honoured to take part in Women Aloud NI's mass contribution to International Women's Day 2018. Following on from an energetic and inspiring launch to the annual project initiated by Jane Talbot in 2016, the 2018 event saw women writers from and living in the North of Ireland come together across the country… Continue reading @womenaloudNI loud and proud for #InternationalWomensDay2018
Hugh MacDonald interviews novelist and filmmaker Margot McCuaig I was featured in the Bella Caledonia this weekend, the monthly colour magazine produced in collaboration with the National newspaper. Hugh MacDonald is a powerful writer and he made an excellent job of exploring my filmmaking, my background, my novel writing and my love of history, football culture… Continue reading “The history woman” (not a bad mantle to aspire to)
You know this already, it is 2018. The deep red of the hawthorn fruit is resplendent against a silver sky, its bark black with penetrating rain. Patches of pale yellow swathe the still green grass, disfiguring the enduring landscape, but look again and you can imagine sheep flocking home, their woolly edges like fallen clouds… Continue reading 2018, a year of satisfaction, subterfuge or sabotage.
2018 kicked off with a bang with news that my short story 'F's Fir Fingers' made the Top 40 of the Women and Words prose competition! You can learn more about it here. The national and East of England winners will be announced from the shortlist on the 8th of January. I'm just delighted to… Continue reading Words and Women prose competition
I am delighted that my story, 'Farming Lives', is featured on the wonderful Paragraph Planet flash fiction site. It's always a pleasure to have my wee short stories published. Here's my latest 75 word piece of flash fiction, inspired by an event I witnessed whilst at home on Rathlin last week. It's a bit dark,… Continue reading A dark November tale.
I'm pleased to be the featured story on Paragraph Planet today. "Silence isn't always a choice' was inspired by the powerful #MeToo campaign and this is for everyone that contributed, and for those who 'chose' not too.
Last night team Thunderpoint made a group appearance at Waterstones Byres Road as part of the Byres Road Book Festival. Myself, Kevin Scott and Andrew C Ferguson read from our novels, chatted to one another about character, plot and processes and answered questions from a very inquisitive and quite brilliant sold out audience. It's always… Continue reading Thunderpoints are Go!
I was really delighted to be part of the audience that swayed, laughed, wept and even sang, at the ‘Carol Ann Duffy with Jackie Kay’ event at the Edinburgh Book Festival last week. I was there as a guest of the team behind the phenomenal ‘Dangerous Women’ project. The project, in case you haven’t already… Continue reading A Laureate, a Makar, the @edbookfest and @DangerousWomen_
A short time ago, I attended a seminar at the Scottish Oral History Centre at the University of Strathclyde. Professor Callum G Brown was discussing "Laughing Out Loud in Oral Testimony: what does it mean?". Callum was talking about personal testimony interviews he had been recording as part of the research for his latest book, stating that he… Continue reading Laughing in literature, working class women in Scottish writing
I haven't as yet read A Decent Ride, Irvine Welsh's new novel, but it was more than decent listening to him read, or more appropriately perform, several scenes at the Aye Write festival on Friday night. We all know Irvine Welsh is a phenomenal talent. And not just as a writer. During the referendum he regularly appeared on… Continue reading Aye Write; the Scottishness of Welsh, Dolan & Cleeves
Margot McCuaig 