Edinburgh
Writing

The castle disappears into haar. The city carries on.

Haar mornings · Stone city · The working-class voice

Edinburgh is two cities pretending to be one. There is the Edinburgh of the festival, the castle, the whisky tourism, the shortbread tins. And there is the Edinburgh of the estates, the scheme, the working men's clubs, the specific dialect that tells you exactly where someone grew up within a half-mile radius. The writing in Tumbleweed Words comes from the second city, which is also the real one.

"He said he was fine the way people say they are fine when they are absolutely not fine and everyone in the pub knew it and nobody said anything because that was also fine, in its way, which is the Edinburgh way."

Tumbleweed Words — Edinburgh

Edinburgh flash fiction is concerned with voice above all else. The Scots working-class vernacular is one of the most precise and unsentimental literary languages available — it does not permit vagueness, it does not reward decoration. A sentence in Edinburgh dialect means exactly what it says and nothing more. That is the tradition the Tumbleweed Words Edinburgh pieces work in.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry written on trains, in hostels, and in city streets. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, and The Dundee Anthology. Pushcart-nominated. Five years on Substack.