If it’s Halloween it must be time for this brilliant piece by Colin Nissan from the ever wonderful McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Spookily good. ‘I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that
Earlier this year Dunfermline artist Alan Grieve was commissioned by the Fife Cultural Trust to create work inspired by the Kingdom the Danced. The project was aimed at people over 60 encouraging them to take part in a contemporary art event. Grieve collected over 100 stories of social dancing in Fife along with fascinating photographs and newspaper clippings. He then collaborated with Glasgow based animator Jim Stirk to create these
Hugh Hefner’s letterhead in 1955 Charles Altas, the ‘world’s most perfectly developed man’ Terry Gilliam’s production company, Poo Poo Pictures, 1989
An exhibition of Gordon Parks’ rare color photographs, entitled ‘Gordon Parks: Segregation Story’, will go on view this Autumn at The High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The photos capture a particularly disturbing moment in American history, captured via the lives of an African American family, the Thorntons, living under Jim Crow segregation in 1950s Alabama. The images, originally titled ‘The Restraints: Open and Hidden’, were first taken for a
Champagne is still the drink we choose when celebrating a special occasion, whether it is a milestone birthday, getting hitched, the birth of a child, winning the division one play-offs. It is a luxury product, but when you know the difficulties the wine growers have to overcome in the vineyard cycle then you realise why. The Champagne region lies in northern France, 80 miles north-east of Paris, just below the
Must be hard for men: they get into grooming and in touch with their sensitive side only to find women like nothing better than a dissolute Bill Murray muttering Bob Dylan lyrics while sitting on a ratty garden chair. Here he is in a tremendous clip from his new film St Vincent.
Gregory Burke is originally from Rosyth near Dunfermline. Burke’s first play was Gagarin Way, set in the factories of West Fife. Black Watch, for the national Theatre of Scotland, debuted at in 2006 and met with critical acclaim. It has since been performed throughout Scotland and has toured in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Other works include Occy Eyes, The Straits, Unsecured, On Tour, Liar, Shellshocked and Hoors. More recently, Burke wrote the screenplay for the film 71, about a
Jennie Erdal is the author of Ghosting, a memoir of her childhood in Lochgelly and of being the long-serving ghostwriter of Naim Atallah, the publisher and owner of Quartet Books. She worked for him for 20 years, first as a translator of Russian novels, then as a commissioning editor and finally as unacknowledged ghostwriter. Ghosting was chosen as a BBC Book of the Week and was shortlisted for the Saltire Scoiety First Book Award and for the JR Ackerley
Joe Corrie was born in 1894 in Slamannan near Falkirk. A few years later his family moved to Cardenden in Fife. He left school at 14 in 1908 to work in the local pits and during the First World War he worked at a colliery in Ayrshire. On his return to Cardenden in 1918 he began writing verse and it wasn’t until the twenties that he began working on plays.
Former headteacher Christina Banach is from Lochgelly. Her debut novel Minty is published by Three Hares Publishing, based in London. Fife features heavily in her book, in particular Ruby Bay in Elie. A member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the Society of Authors, Christina is working on her next book – a contemporary ghost story-come-psychological thriller, set mainly in Glencoe. www.christinabanach.com