Graeme Armstrong (author)

Graeme Armstrong (born 1991) is a Scottish author best known for his debut novel, The Young Team. The novel won the 2021 Betty Trask Award and Somerset Maugham Award, and was Scots Language Awards 'Scots Book of the Year' in the same year. The Young Team  is currently being adapted for television by Synchronicity Films.

In April 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their 'Best of Young British Novelists' list, an honour presented every ten years to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty.

Biography 

Armstrong is from Airdrie, Scotland. As a teenager was involved with North Lanarkshire's gang culture as a member of the 'Young Mavis', from Glenmavis. At fourteen, he was expelled from Airdrie Academy and began attending Coatbridge High School, where he joined another gang, the 'LL TOI' from Langloan, Coatbridge.

Aged sixteen, following the deaths of three friends by heroin overdose and after reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, Armstrong pursued a route into higher education, and began to break away from gang life. During his time in gangs, he struggled with drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and violence; he "stopped taking drugs on Christmas Day 2012" and speaks candidly about having a Christian faith. His experiences inspired his debut novel, The Young Team, which is written in West Central Scots language.

In 2013, Armstrong received a 2:1 Bachelor of Arts undergraduate degree in English Studies from University of Stirling and returned to Stirling to complete a Master of Letters in Creative Writing, graduating with Merit in 2015. He is currently undertaking a PhD the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

Armstrong hosts workshops about youth violence, substance abuse and gang culture in schools and prisons. He has worked with the Violence Reduction Unit and Community Justice Scotland and other organisations involved in violence prevention, such as Medics Against Violence from Glasgow. In 2022, he spoke at the annual School Leaders Scotland conference and continues to work within the community.

In 2021, Armstrong wrote and starred in a short film for the Edinburgh International Book Festival Infectious Nihilism and Small Metallic Pieces of Hope  directed by James Price. Later that year, he presented a BBC documentary, Scotland the Rave with IWC Media, which was subsequently nominated for a BAFTA Scotland and Royal Television Society Scotland award.

At the 2023 Education Scotland 'Scottish Attainment Challenge' conference, Armstrong gave a keynote speech based around his lived experience of education, gang violence and recovery from addiction and substance misuse.

During the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2023, Armstrong hosted James Kelman and spoke around difficulties in working-class representation, "cultural banishment" and Kelman's new work, 'God's Teeth and Other Phenomena'.

Armstrong wrote and presented a three-part BBC Scotland documentary series, Street Gangs exploring current Scottish gang culture including the recent impact of social media and drill music / roadman culture, and his lived experience as an ex-gang member, which aired in October 2023 and is featured on BBC iPlayer.

Awards and honours 
In April 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their "Best of Young British Novelists" list, an honour presented every ten years "to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty."

Publications 
 The Young Team - novel (Picador, 2020)
 Billy the Kid and the KO at the Coral - novel extract (Gutter, 2019)
 Landit - short story (The Middle of a Sentence: Short Prose Anthology, The Common Breath, 2020) 
 The Mad Hoose - from memoir (Stryvling Press, 2021)
 My Head Teacher Helped me Choose Life - essay (TES, 2021)
 Standard English is oor Second Language - essay (Literature Alliance Scotland, 2021)
 The Jakit, Mysticism n PPK Resurrection - from memoir (Scottish Book Trust, 2022)
 La Gang - Italian translation of The Young Team (Guanda, 2021)
 The Young Team - Spanish translation (Automática Editorial, 2022)
 The Cloud Factory - from memoir (Granta, 2023)

Filmography 
 Scotland the Rave – single documentary (IWC Media, 2021)
 Street Gangs – documentary series (Tern Media, 2023)

References

Living people
People from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire
21st-century Scottish writers
1991 births
Scottish documentary filmmakers
Scots-language writers
People educated at Airdrie Academy
People educated at Coatbridge High School
Alumni of the University of Stirling