The Alasdair Gray Archive Commission

Gutter Magazine and The Alasdair Gray Archive are looking to commission a new work of poetry or prose. We’re teaming up to support a creative interpretation responding to the life, work or material at The Alasdair Gray Archive.

2024 would have been Alasdair’s 90th birthday. The commission will be marking this anniversary and we are excited to see work that takes Gray’s expansive body of work as a jumping off point to produce new work that surprises us.

The selected writer will receive £500 plus time to research, explore the collection and work on site at The Alasdair Gray Archive. They will then produce a new work responding in some way to what they have found. We’re not looking for a literal response but instead work that shows how generative and multi-faceted the creative material can be. We are after a creative response in poetry, prose, or another form and as concrete, abstract or experimental as you like.

We are offering a fee of £500 for the work, plus travel expenses, as well as space to work in the archive, and publication of the piece in Issue 30 of Gutter Magazine. The piece would need to be submitted to the magazine in early May 2024 to appear in our August issue and we’d hope to be able to invite the selected writer perform it at launch events for which there would be a further fee.This creative commission joins a series of commissions by The Alasdair Gray Archive including new work by Juana Adcock, Michael Pederson, and Chitra Ramaswamy.

To apply, send a letter of no more than 500 words to contactguttermagazine@gmail.com answering the following points:

1. Tell us about your writing or practice so far.

2. What would this commission mean to you?

3. What interests you about the Alasdair Gray Archive?

Deadline for applications is November 30th.