Scotland
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
A huge new bookstore in the heart of Mexico’s drug cartel region hopes to combat ‘narco culture’ by offering an alternative, including classes for children and adults. Innisfree Poetry Bookstore in Boulder, Colorado has plans to move to a larger…
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Universal Library Cards
In a plan to boost literacy rates, Scotland is testing a program to give all children automatic library memberships. The pilot program gives library cards out upon birth, reports BBC.
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The Rumpus Interview with Andrew Ervin
Andrew Ervin discusses his debut novel, Burning Down George Orwell’s House, social media and writing, and how video games can serve as a way to understand the post-human world.
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Wild Are the Winds to Meet You
On September 18th, the night Scotland voted on its independence from the UK, I was standing on the porch of a Civil War-era mansion after a reading. It was storming.
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The Rumpus Interview With Jon Hopkins
The Rumpus talks to Jon Hopkins about his new album, Asleep Versions, about songwriting, recording, and music, and about cooking dinner, sort of.
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Building Hagrid’s Hut
Killiechassie House, the £1.9 million Scottish estate author J.K. Rowling calls home, will gain a new addition: a circular stone hut similar to the hut that Hagrid resides in at Hogwarts. The summer cottage recently received approval from the local…
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Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Manuscript
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left an original manuscript of a Sherlock Holmes story to his daughter, who in turn left it to the Nation of Scotland. Then the manuscript sat in a bank vault. Conan Doyle studied medicine in Edinburgh…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #49: Divided by a Common Tongue
Rick Moody interviews Belle & Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson about his solo album, misinterpreting songs, and the band’s rough early days.
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Sympathy for These Devils
Drug addicts, pimps, whores, misogynists, hoodlums… all the usual suspects inhabit the stories in Irvine Welsh’s new collection.