CFP: James Kelman at 80
Spring 2027, University of Glasgow (date tbc)
This international conference will consider the living legacy of Kelman’s writing, & his ongoing significance in the cultural & political worlds of the 21st century. Proposals are invited on Kelman’s fiction & its political significance, focusing on any period or aspect of Kelman’s work.
Submissions deadline: 30 June 2026
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/05/18/james-kelman-at-80
A man walked out of the sea one February morning dressed in a boilersuit & bunnet, and wearing a tartan scarf which had been tucked crosswise under each oxter to be fastened by a safety-pin at a point roughly centre of his shoulder blades…
—James Kelman, “Incident on a Windswept Beach”
Published in THE STORY OF THE STONE: Tales, Entreaties, and Incantations (PM Press, 2025)
https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1769
#Scottish #literature #JamesKelman #Flashfiction #Scots #Scotslanguage #Scotstober
“It didn’t occur to me for about five or six years after leaving school that literature was something I could be involved in. Then I discovered it was possible to write stories myself…”
—an extract from James Kelman on “Elitism & English Literature”, from a book I’m currently typesetting
#Scottish #literature #workingclass #writers #writing #JamesKelman #elitism
“We’ve returned to a stage where ‘reality’ as presented by authority is allowed unchallenged. We live or die by a value-system that is abhorrent, typically upper class, white-Anglo-Saxon-heterosexual male. In prose fiction this is expressed by a 3rd party narrative where the ‘voice’ is Standard English Literary form.”
—Existence is a guerilla campaign: Rastko Novaković interviews James Kelman
https://salvage.zone/existence-is-a-guerilla-campaign-an-interview-with-james-kelman/
#Scottish #literature #voice #narrative #power #class #JamesKelman
Malignant bureaucracies, class hatred, the revanchist rump of British Empire - they were all on the wane we were told, but presently they are alive and virulent. These are the cold winds that blow through half a century of James Kelman’s writing, huddled around a warm poetic of everyday resistance.
James Kelman’s American Odyssey
“It is this relationship with America that has become essential in understanding Kelman and his writing. The country offered him a second home while he took up teaching posts… As this is the case it is particularly interesting to consider You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free and Dirt Road together. Written twelve years apart, their similarities and differences are telling.”
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2018/07/go-west-james-kelmans-american-odyssey/
Assoc for Scottish Literature
Ian Hunt
CaltonBooks
OxfamBooksandMusicStirling