Graeme Armstrong: ‘When I stopped taking drugs, I felt a kind of loneliness’
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/graeme-armstrong-interview-the-young-team-airdrie-gangs
The debut novelist on how to write violence, taking the same advice as Irvine Welsh, and his love of Goosebumps
Graeme Armstrong, 28, grew up in Airdrie, east of Glasgow. He was involved with gang culture from a young age. Expelled from school in his mid-teens, he transferred to Coatbridge high school, and went on to study English literature at Stirling University. The Young Team, his first novel, is a raw and lyrical Bildungsroman that traces the life of Azzy Williams, a smart, secretly sensitive boy growing up in a rough Scottish town where he is drawn to gangs, drugs and crime. The book is written in a voice that recalls Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner – dialect that fizzes off the page.
How much of Azzy Williams is your own experience?
I was engaged in gangs in the local community, in North Lanarkshire. I spent many, many years living the life of Azzy Williams. His voice is a mouthpiece for my own experience. Of course he’s a fictional character in a fictional world, but his voice and my voice are akin.
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