Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares
Out now
A searingly honest and brutally funny account of being part of the first generation to grow up in Scotland's most ambitious New Town... at a time when trousers were flared, sexism was the norm, and the beating of school children was industrialised. But with mass strike action, the three-day week, and the shift from the old imperial monetary system to decimalisation, it was also a time of great unrest and change. Set against the social landscape of the time is Thomson's personal story - the trauma of sexual abuse and coming to terms with being an outsider.
LG Thomson
Author | Artist
LG Thomson uses writing and art to explore the ways in which the past echoes around us and how life leaves its marks upon us. She is fascinated by the push-pull tension of the internal conflict and the struggle between dark and light. Her work is essentially about the absurdity, joy and pain of existence.
LG was born in Glasgow. Home was a single room tenement flat with a communal toilet until her family moved to Cumbernauld, a social experiment billed as The Town for Tomorrow. She left home at 17 to attend art school in Dundee. Four tumultuous years later she graduated into a grim landscape of mass unemployment. A heady mix of life on the dole, artist’s residencies and waitressing followed before she gained employment as an illustrator and graphic designer. She went on to specialise in poster campaigns for issues as varied as HIV and AIDS awareness, football hooliganism, and knife crime. When she began writing her first novel pressures of time meant that her own art fell by the wayside. After a hiatus lasting more than two decades art exploded back into her life.
She now lives in Ullapool, a small fishing village on the north west coast of Scotland lying on the same latitude as Lost Cove Alaska. She is the author of seven novels, including Boyle’s Law, a noir thriller set in the Highlands. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and literary publications including Wyldblood Magazine, Epoch Press, and Art North. Her latest book, Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares, is a narrative memoir about being part of the first generation to grow up in Scotland’s most ambitious New Town. It was published by Outcast Press on 15 November 2022.
Creative writing workshops: Ullapool | Coigach
