New Writing Scotland publishes works by writers resident in Scotland or Scots by birth, upbringing or inclination.

All forms of writing are invited: autobiography and memoirs; creative responses to events and experiences; drama; graphic artwork (monochrome only); poetry; political and cultural commentary and satire; screenplays; short fiction; travel writing or any other creative prose may be submitted. We have a maximum recommended length of 3,500 words in total. Please do not send complete novels or other long works, although self-contained extracts are acceptable. The work must be neither previously published nor accepted for publication and may be in any of the languages of Scotland. 

From 1 August 2023, submissions are invited for New Writing Scotland 42, publishing in summer 2024. Prose pieces should be double-spaced and carry an approximate word-count. Please do not put your name on your submission; instead, please provide your name and contact details, including email and postal addresses, on a covering letter. If you are sending more than one piece, please group everything into one document. The deadline is midnight (GMT) on 31 October 2023.

Visit our Submittable page to submit your work

We have limited space in each edition, and therefore shorter pieces are more suitable – although longer items of exceptional quality may still be included. A maximum length of 3,500 words is suggested. Please send no more than four poems, or one prose work. Successful contributors will be paid at a rate of £25 per published page.

Submission is free. Authors retain all rights to their work(s), and can submit and/or publish the same work(s) elsewhere after they appear in New Writing Scotland.

Authors retain all rights to their work(s), and are free to submit and/or publish the same work(s) elsewhere after they appear in New Writing Scotland.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us. Details can be found on our contact page.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors. nothing but a set of eyes for stars: New Writing Scotland 41 is the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, and includes new work from thirty-nine authors – some internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

Pre-order nothing but a set of eyes for stars: New Writing Scotland 41

Read the Editors’ Introduction

Education and Literature are old school friends. With buttoned-up blazer and responsible shoulders, Education sits at the front of class, passing to its peers the tools needed to navigate the world that loiters restlessly at the gates. Literature, that wild-eyed dreamer, lurks at the back of the room, scars the desk with secrets and stories, and breathes life into the lesson. In this new issue of The Bottle Imp, we timetable a literary lesson on Scotland’s schools and teachers.

Editorial

• Everyday’s A Schuil Day

Articles

• “The most exhausting of all ways to make a living”: School Teaching and Education in the Life and Work of Sorley MacLean and Iain Crichton Smith (Emma Dymock)
• Fae Tantallon tae TikTok: a decade o Scots at Schuil (Jamie Fairbairn)
• George Friel, Muriel Spark, and “the music of what happens” (Linden Bicket)
• Hugh Miller (1802–1856) and the Crucible of Childhood (David Alston)
• Sonny and Me: Writing for YAs (Ross Sayers)
• Teaching Tyranny: The Crime of Miss Jean Brodie (Kaiyue He)

A video of Dr Leith Davis’s talk, given on 11 April this year.

“The Lyon in Mourning” manuscript (1747–1775), currently held by the National Library of Scotland, is a unique document in Scottish history. Compiled by Jacobite clergyman Robert Forbes after the suppression of the final Jacobite Rising in 1746, the work consists of ten small volumes of transcribed conversations, narrative accounts, poems, songs, letters and even material relics such as scraps of fabric and pieces of a boat.

Forbes’s manuscript is currently the focus of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded Partnership Grant between Simon Fraser University’s Research Centre for Scottish Studies (RCSS) and Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL) and the National Library of Scotland (NLS). Using the digital images of the manuscript hosted on Simon Fraser University Library’s website, the project uses TEI encoding to display and analyse the contents of “The Lyon in Mourning.” The project will provide new evidence about the nature and extent of Jacobite activity in post-1745 Scotland, focusing in particular on the role of women, Gaelic-speakers and labouring-class individuals. In this talk, Dr Leith Davis offers an overview of the project and discusses the results to date.

Dr Leith Davis is a Professor in the Department of English and the Director of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University.

The Association for Scottish Literature and the Robert Burns World Federation announce their national competition for young writers, for pupils in S1 and S2.

Pupils should write a short story of not more than 750 words in length. Each pupil may submit one entry, with a title, and signed as their own work. The stories may be written in any of the languages of Scotland.

Teachers should select a maximum of six stories per school for entry to the national competition. The final submission date for the national competition is 30 June 2023. The top three entrants will win prizes of £100, £75 and £50 for first, second and third place.

Teachers should send two copies of each entry, clearly printed on A4 sheets and with details of the pupil’s name and school contact details, and marked Burns Federation/ ASL Annual Awards, to:

Robert Burns World Federation Ltd 
3A John Dickie Street 
Kilmarnock 
KA1 1HW

Alternatively, teachers can email entries, with confirmation that all the stories are their pupils’ own work, to admin@rbwf.org.uk