When I was in high school, I never realised I wanted to be an author because I never felt represented in the novels and the texts that we studied in English. 

Particularly as a Glaswegian whose family spoke Scots and were taught all their lives that it was ‘slang’ (a message that was naturally passed onto me), and particularly as a working class person who had no modern understanding of what that socioeconomic identity and reality meant.

I’d never read a novel that included any of those things, and so it was almost unfathomable to imagine a world in which I could find myself amongst the pages of a novel. For this reason I felt quite disengaged with reading as a teenager, and it’s why I think that portraying real and relevant storylines is vital in the GCSE curriculum in order to broaden the possibilities of what reading and writing can be, and who it can be for.

When I was a student, I didn't feel that Shakespeare was applicable to me because I didn’t feel that the lessons I would learn within those texts would be something I could apply to my own life. I couldn’t resonate with the characters and the situations they were in, and truthfully, the language was too difficult to enjoy. I still remember almost falling asleep in last period double English as Macbeth was read aloud to us – a novel that I have a deep appreciation for now, not solely because it’s set in Scotland!

However, I slowly and gradually built my appreciation for these texts, and my stamina for reading them, through reading for pleasure and not reading because it was a lesson or an obligation. 

When I came back to Shakespeare in university, I had such a new understanding of the breadth and depth of his stories, but only because I had honed those skills first by discovering what stories I enjoyed, and what felt relevant and representative to me.

I did this through individual exploration, through picking up books at random and testing what stories and genres I felt most engaged and impacted by.

What feels real and relevant in literature means something different for everybody, precisely because everybody is different. They bring their own internal worlds, lived experiences, and likes and dislikes to any story. 

And everyone is a different kind of reader – whether they enjoy more visual stories such as comics or graphic novels, whether they enjoy audiobooks that can enhance a story through performance, or whether they prefer fast-paced action adventures, comedies, or science fiction and fantasy worlds, all of this makes what feels ‘relevant’ and ‘real’ different.

I discovered the stories I liked, and the type of reader I was, through testing out all of the above.

In saying this, I think for anyone to see themselves reflected in the pages of a story can be life changing. I didn’t read a novel that included the Scots language in a modern context until I was at university, even despite going through the Scottish SQA curriculum. 

Modern Scots texts were optional at the end of high school, but this was at the point that I was also undergoing exams, and of course, optional texts were largely left aside in favour of the exam texts (Oscar Wilde, Carol Ann Duffy, etc). I never realised the specific humour and personality that Scots literature has, and how comforting and familiar it felt to me. I never realised how special it would feel to recognise phrases people say, or streets I’ve been down. 

I’d only ever encountered Scots as a historical artifact through writers such as Robert Burns, which made it feel like a lost art or forgotten way of speaking. This compounded onto what my family had been taught too, and the reason I was largely discouraged from speaking it growing up. 

But when a story feels real, either within the world or the characters, that’s when it becomes possible to personally connect to it. That’s when it feels relevant and like it might offer something worthwhile.

The curriculum would massively benefit from being as varied as it possibly could be, in order to catch every single person that it can possibly represent. 
There are truly an infinite amount of ways that people can be represented in all areas of their life, and an infinite amount of ways a storyline can feel ‘real’ and relevant.

Modernising the curriculum to include texts that are being published today or have been published in recent years would ensure that stories feel as current and accessible as possible; tackling issues that are important today, using language and vernacular that is being spoken outside of the classroom.


Glasgow Boys is a novel that I would have loved as a teenager. It remains one of the most joyous things I’ve ever created, purely because it represents life the way that I’ve experienced it – through minimum wage part-time jobs and their joys and pitfalls, through chronic illnessness, through being a working class and first-generation university student juggling those aspects of my identity, and from being Glaswegian through and through. 

It represents first loves, first friendships, first heartbreaks, but the way that I’ve personally experienced them, in the words that I resonate with the most and feel most true. 

I think this is so important for any reader to connect to a story. My hopes for readers of Glasgow Boys would be that they feel represented in some form amongst its pages, and that it might even inspire them to find their own voice, and their own words to capture it.

I understand that Duck Feet by Ely Percy has now been added to the SQA Curriculum, and I think this is a huge step in the right direction – especially for Scots. 

However, I’d argue that we can go further; we can truly make an effort to showcase storylines that feel real and relevant to everyone, in every medium that there is, and give readers the tools to find what they love themselves.