Tom Newlands on Only Here, Only Now
Tuesday 18th June
Topping & Company Booksellers of Edinburgh, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
7.10pm
7.30pm
Join us to celebrate publication of Only Here, Only Now, an original and unforgettable coming-of-age novel from a formidable new talent, taking the reader inside the brilliant, fizzing mind of a teenage girl with ADHD as she navigates family and opportunity in post-industrial Scotland.
Only Here, Only Now
It is the blazing hot summer of 1994 in a forgotten corner of Fife, and there is nothing for Cora Mowat to do but hang around the wee scrap of tarmac where the swing-park used to be. She's stuck in her seaside council estate and tired of her own restless mind; desperate to break free but unsure of what the future holds - if it holds anything at all for a girl like her.
When her Mam brings a new man to live with them, tensions rise in their tiny house. Gunner is kind but strange, too - a one-eyed shoplifter with more than a few secrets hidden under the bed. As their attempts to forge a makeshift family are suddenly overturned, Cora rails against her small-town existence in search of love, acceptance and a path to something good. But sometimes you can't move forward until you find your way back...
In this extraordinary debut, drawn from experience but written with riotous imagination, Tom Newlands explores coming-of-age in post-industrial Scotland and what it means to yearn for a life that feels out of reach. Vibrant, lyrical and fiercely funny, Only Here, Only Now is a story of poverty, identity and family, shining with hope and resilience.
About Tom Newlands
Tom Newlands is a multiply neurodivergent Scottish writer. He is a recipient of the London Writer's Award for Literary Fiction, a Creative Future Writer's Award and a Creative Future/TLC Next Up Award. He was one of eleven writers selected for New Writing North's 'A Writing Chance,' and in 2022 was a featured writer at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. He now lives in London.