all bearing witness

February 2025

And there it is: the 31st issue of Gutter is out and about in the world. If you’re a subscriber or a Friend of the magazine, your copy will arrive very soon. If you haven’t quite committed yet, well, get on with it. We’re sending them out in the next few days, so sign up fast if you want one. The last couple of issues have all sold out, and we suspect this one will too.

There’s a host of fabulous writing to look forward to in Issue #31. There’s fiction from Martin MacInnes, Rachelle Atalla and Harry Josephine Giles; essays by Jim Crumley and Rebecca Smith; poetry by Hera Lindsay Bird, Shane Strachan, Julia Liu and Bradley Taylor; Alasdair Gray Archive commissions by Lucy Lauder, Harvey Dimond and Joey Simons; and loads, loads, loads more. You won’t get a better bunch of writing for this price, we reckon.

Another treat in the issue is an interview with the playwright Stef Smith, whose stage adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun was hailed at last year’s Edinburgh International Festival, and whose short-form television series Float recently won a BAFTA Scotland award. Stef spoke to our managing editor Malachy Tallack about these successes, and the challenges of writing for different media. You can read the interview online now. As Stef says, of working in theatre:

“There's something so extraordinary and irreplaceable about sharing a story with a group of people who are all bearing witness to something, and having individual experiences in a collective way”

Another gem from the magazine that’s up on the website already is this review, written by Laura Baliman, of Stuart Murdoch’s novel Nobody’s Empire. Murdoch is well known as the singer in Belle & Sebastian, but this is his first work of fiction. The book’s protagonist, Stephen, like the singer himself, ‘deals with chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as M.E.), an illness that is misunderstood, under-researched and for which there are few known treatments.’ It is a ‘pilgrimage’ of sorts, this story, which focuses on spirituality, mental health and, of course, on music. ‘The triumph of this novel,’ concludes Laura, ‘is not only in its accessible and powerful prose and plot, but in its sincere representation of chronic illness.’

If you’d like to find out more about what’s featured in the magazine, you can read our editorial now. It tells of ‘a glistening thread of transfiguration’ that runs through the issue, from a woman who turns into a gorse bush and a ‘possibly magic’ goose, to a missing limb and a dystopian folk tale.

Our Book of the Month for February 2025 is

Heather Parry

’s thrilling new novel Carrion Crow. That book will be published a bit later in the month, and so will our review. Check back on the website in a couple of weeks to read it.

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Remember, the deadline for applying to our series of workshops for writers finishing their first book of prose is the end of February. Four writers will be selected to take part. They’ll get feedback on their work-in-progress, learn crucial editing skills, find out how to submit to agents and publishers, and much more besides. The workshops are open only to writers living in Scotland who have not previously published a book. They’ll be led by our managing editor, Malachy Tallack, author of five books of fiction and non-fiction.

You can find out all of the details and submit your application here.