Kevin MacNeil

After a bike crash in a foggy Edinburgh, troubled young actor Robert Lewis wakes to find that life has changed for the darker. And the weirder. He's still a deceitful egoist but now life seems to be deceiving and manipulating him. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong.

a novel

A method actor's guide to Jekyll and Hyde

The Stornoway Way

On an island like no other, the annual Brilliant & Forever festival is a much anticipated event; its participants a story away from either glory or infamy. This year, three best friends - two human, one alpaca - are chosen to compete, so victory is not only about reward. The glitterati descends, the festival begins: thirteen performers, each have their own story to tell. Who will be chosen by the judges? Who will be chosen by the people? This is a novel like no other; a whip-cracking, energetic, laugh-out-loud satire on what we value in culture, and in our lives. And yet, written with exquisite warmth and empathy, The Brilliant & Forever is also a moving exploration of integrity, friendship and belonging. It’ll split your sides and break your heart.

The Brilliant & Forever

The Stornoway Way is a provocative, lyrical novel which chronicles the misadventures of an idiosyncratic young Scotsman in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland who rails against the constraints of his extraordinary but vanishing island culture as well as western civilsation as a whole. A debut novel with refreshing and arresting style, humour and insight.

The islands of Scotland influenced many of the country's most important poets through their inhabitance there, whether during childhood or by choice. This anthology pays tribute to the islands' creative output by bringing together a huge array of poetic talent, from the internationally renowned—George Mackay Brown, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, and Iain Crichton Smith—to those fantastic poets deserving of more attention—Meg Bateman, Alex Cluness, Jen Hadfield, Aonghas MacNeacail, Jim Mainland, and others—in one wonderful collection. With poems exploring the themes of love, language, landscape, identity, and belonging, this compilation is a significant and heartfelt celebration of Scottish poetry and place.

An Anthology of Scottish Islands Poetry

These Islands, We Sing

"This forward-facing collection of new poetry and texts from the Gaelic diaspora captures a moment in time -- a snapshot of the world"--Foreword.

Shore to Shore

'History isn't a thing of the past - we're making it now' - Jim Sutherland, Artistic Director, Struileag The descendants of the Gaels are scattered far and wide across the world - a diaspora that is at once cherished and overlooked. This unique, heartfelt book brings vividly to life through raps, secular psalms, love poems and aphorisms the Gaelic experience as it was, as it is and as it might be. Shore to Shore/Cladach gu Cladach is a vital legacy of the multimedia project Struileag, at the heart of which lies poetry, and is a demonstration that inside every culture is to be found the whole human condition.

Struileag: Cladach gu Cladach

A unique diary packed with hilarious observations on life, and how to deal with it. Features Archie the Alpaca, beloved character from the bestselling The Brilliant & Forever Illustrated throughout with original work from Moose Alain. Written by an Alpaca. Illustrated by a Moose. If you haven't yet met Archie the Alpaca now's your chance. Prolific writer, social observer, grassiccino drinker, occasional dancer and loyal friend, Archie sees the world like no-one else. Gathered here in The Diary of Archie the Alpaca are his thoughts, feelings, loves, hates and everything in between.

Diary of Archie the Alpaca

MacNeil's novel, though drawing on Stevenson's novella, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is never slavishly derivative. His Method Actor's Guide is, in its finest glinting moments, that "whole new thing" of which Hemingway wrote, and from first to last an enticing read' -- Tom Adair, The Scotsman 'A phenomenally good novel ... brilliant, touching, funny and clever' -- Roger Hutchinson, West Highland Free Press After a bike crash in a foggy Edinburgh, troubled young actor Robert Lewis wakes to find that life has changed for the darker. And the weirder. He's still a deceitful egoist but now life seems to be deceiving and manipulating him. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. He's losing control of his love life, his starring role in a new adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, and, quite possibly, his mind. A Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll and Hyde is a dark, maniacal thriller that explores many kinds of duality - individual, social and cultural, and is a heartfelt tale about the search for belonging and the nature of love and desire. It is also bloody funny.

A Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll and Hyde

This collection marks the arrival of a major new talent in Scottish poetry. Kevin MacNeil's voice and vision, while rooted in the Hebridean islands, is open to a wide range of cultures, not only those of Scotland – from Gaeldom to urban Scotland – but to the wider European and American mind and, through his interest in Zen Buddhism, to Japanese and Chinese culture. With astonishing freshness and versatility, MacNeil's poetry creates powerful connections and new combinations -he has wit as well as feeling, a powerful sense of the past and the local while being resolutely turned towards the future and the cross-cultural.

Love And Zen In The Outer Hebrides

‘Fuck everyone from Holden Caulfield to Bridget Jones, fuck all the American and English phoney fictions that claim to speak for us; they don’t know the likes of us exist and they never did. We are who we are because we grew up the Stornoway way. We do not live in the back of beyond, we live in the very heart of beyond ...’ Meet R Stornoway, drink-addled misfit, inhabitant of the Hebridean Isle of Lewis, and meandering man fighting to break free of an island he just can’t seem to let go of...

Janet Paisley

Moira Burgess

Going Up Ben Nevis in a Bubble Car

First imagined in the 1960s but never published, this collection of Robert Louis Stevenson's essays, fables and short stories was compiled by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares - a collection of their favourite works of non-fiction, short stories and fables. The themes - integrity, intellectual and imaginative truth, literary meaning, the fantastic - are common to all three authors, and these connections are explored in an introduction by Kevin MacNeil. Including such classic tales as 'The Bottle Imp' and rare essays on crime, morality, dreams and romance, Robert Louis Stevenson: An Anthology is rich, eloquent and utterly readable.

Kevin MacNeil

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