Graeme Armstrong (author)

Graeme Armstrong (born 1991) is a Scottish author best known for his debut novel, The Young Team. The novel won the 2021 Betty Trask Award and Somerset Maugham Award, and was Scots Language Awards 'Scots Book of the Year' in the same year. The Young Team is currently being adapted for television by Synchronicity Films.

In April 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their 'Best of Young British Novelists' list, an honour presented every ten years to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty.

Biography
Armstrong is from Airdrie, Scotland. As a teenager he was involved in North Lanarkshire's 'young team' territorial gang culture as a member of the Young Mavis, from Glenmavis. At fourteen, he was expelled from Airdrie Academy and began attending Coatbridge High School, where he joined another gang, the Lang El Toi (LL TOI) from Langloan, Coatbridge.

Aged sixteen, following the deaths of three friends by heroin overdose and after reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, Armstrong pursued a route of higher education, and began to break away from gang life. During his time in gangs, he struggled with alcohol abuse, drug addiction and violence. Armstrong "stopped taking drugs on Christmas Day 2012" and speaks candidly about having a Christian faith. His experiences inspired his debut novel, The Young Team, which is written in West Central Scots language.

In 2013, Armstrong received a 2:1 Bachelor of Arts undergraduate degree in English Studies from the University of Stirling and returned there to complete a Master of Letters in Creative Writing, graduating with Merit in 2015. As of 2023, he is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

Armstrong hosts workshops and conferences around youth violence, substance abuse and gang culture in schools and prisons. He has worked with the Violence Reduction Unit and Community Justice Scotland and other organisations involved in violence prevention, such as Medics Against Violence. In 2022, he spoke at the annual School Leaders Scotland conference and continues to work within the community.

In 2021, Armstrong wrote and starred in a short film for the Edinburgh International Book Festival Infectious Nihilism and Small Metallic Pieces of Hope directed by James Price. Later that year, he presented a BBC documentary, Scotland the Rave with IWC Media, which was subsequently nominated for a BAFTA Scotland and Royal Television Society Scotland award.

At the 2023 Education Scotland 'Scottish Attainment Challenge' conference, Armstrong gave a keynote speech based around his lived experience of education, gang violence, substance misuse and recovery from addiction.

During the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2023, Armstrong hosted James Kelman and spoke around difficulties in working-class representation, "cultural banishment" and Kelman's new work, 'God's Teeth and Other Phenomena'.

Armstrong wrote and presented a three-part BBC Scotland documentary series, Street Gangs exploring current Scottish gang culture, including the recent impact of social media, drill music / roadman culture, and his lived experience as an ex-gang member, which aired in October 2023 and is featured on BBC iPlayer.

Armstrong is an ambassador for The Hope Collective, a London-based anti-violence organisation, formed originally to support the 20th anniversary legacy campaign for Damilola Taylor.

In June 2024, New College Lanarkshire inducted Armstrong as an honorary lecturer to celebrate the launch of their Undergraduate School in partnership with the University of the West of Scotland, offering the first degree level study in North Lanarkshire, alongside others including author and broadcaster Damian Barr, a fellow North Lanarkshire native.

Awards and honours
In April 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their "Best of Young British Novelists" list, an honour presented every ten years "to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty."

Publication

 * The Young Team - novel (Picador, 2020)
 * La Gang - Italian translation of The Young Team (Guanda, 2021)
 * The Young Team - Spanish translation (Automática Editorial, 2022)
 * Billy the Kid and the KO at the Coral - novel extract (Gutter, 2019)
 * Landit - short story (The Middle of a Sentence: Short Prose Anthology, The Common Breath, 2020)
 * The Mad Hoose - from memoir (Stryvling Press, 2021)
 * The Jakit, Mysticism n PPK Resurrection - from memoir (Scottish Book Trust, 2022)
 * The Cloud Factory - from memoir (Granta, 2023)

Filmography

 * Scotland the Rave – single documentary (IWC Media, 2021)
 * Street Gangs – documentary series (Tern Media, 2023)