@cath_simpson13 reading at Truestory book launch

Top floor of Waterstones on Princes St in Edinburgh was packed for the launch of Truestory, a novel by Catherine Simpson that started life as her major project on the Creative Writing MA where I teach. Indeed, it was so crowded I had to stand at the back with dozens of others, hence the low grade quality of this blip. It was a massively proud moment for Catherine, with so many family and friends coming to celebrate her first published novel. Great to see publisher Sandstone Press so wholeheartedly supported the book, too.

This is the second major project from our course to be published as a novel. We've just started teaching our seventh annual cohort, which demonstrates how laborious the process of getting a novel from concept to published book can be. But there are several more graduates with agents and very strong projects, so we have fingers crossed for more events like this.