The debut publication from The Common Breath brings together the work of two friends: Alan Warner is author of eight novels - the first being the highly acclaimed Morvern Callar in 1995, the most recent Their Lips Talk Of Mischief, 2014. Brian Hamil is a writer of fiction and essays, as well as an editor and publisher, having had a variety of different works published in his name over the past decade. They met through the S.B.T. Mentorship program in 2013, and have collected these works of fiction as a mark of artistic kinship over the period since. These stories move from Mull’s windswept beaches to the darkened back from of a Glasgow strip club, from night time on snow covered slopes to the claustrophobia of a bizarre bus journey, but what develops through the differences in setting and style is a shared commitment to local culture and language, to warm humour, and most of all, to listening for the characters to emerge and express themselves within the text.
Authors
Brian Hamill is a Scottish writer, editor, and publisher based in Glasgow, where he works as a software developer. Hamill started writing after attending a creative writing evening class at the University of Glasgow DACE in 2007. He was the recipient of the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for Writing for the Scots language in 2013. He founded thi wurd fiction magazine in 2012, and remained as Submissions Editor for thi wurd books until 2018. His stories have appeared in the Edinburgh Review, New Writing Scotland, Northwords Now and the books Tip Tap Flat and Work in Progress.
Note: There is more than one Alan Warner, this is the page for the award-winning Scottish novelist. For books by other people bearing the same name see Alan Warner Alan Warner (born 1964) is the author of six novels: the acclaimed Morvern Callar (1995), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; These Demented Lands (1997), winner of the Encore Award; The Sopranos (1998), winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award; The Man Who Walks (2002), an imaginative and surreal black comedy; The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven (2006), and The Stars in the Bright Sky (2010), a sequel to The Sopranos. Morvern Callar has been adapted as a film, and The Sopranos is to follow shortly. His short story 'After the Vision' was included in the anthology Children of Albion Rovers (1997) and 'Bitter Salvage' was included in Disco Biscuits (1997). In 2003 he was nominated by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'. In 2010, his novel The Stars in the Bright Sky was included in the longlist for the Man Booker Prize. Alan Warner's novels are mostly set in "The Port", a place bearing some resemblance to Oban. He is known to appreciate 1970s Krautrock band Can; two of his books feature dedications to former band members (Morvern Callar to Holger Czukay and The Man Who Walks to Michael Karoli). Alan Warner currently splits his time between Dublin and Javea, Spain.
