Photo: Robert Ormerod
GRAEME ARMSTRONG
Agent: Juliet Pickering
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Graeme Armstrong is a Scottish writer from Airdrie. His teenage years were spent within North Lanarkshire’s gang culture. Alongside overcoming his own struggles with drug addiction, alcohol abuse and violence, he defied expectation to read English as an undergraduate at the University of Stirling; where, after graduating with honours, he returned to study a Masters’ in Creative Writing. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Strathclyde.
Graeme regularly works within the community visiting prisons and schools, giving talks on his experiences of gang-culture and substance abuse. He promotes a message of anti-violence and abstinence-based recovery.
His bestselling debut novel, THE YOUNG TEAM (Picador, 2020), is inspired by his experiences. It won a Betty Trask Award, a Somerset Maugham Award, and the Scots Book o the Year 2021.
In 2021, Graeme presented Scotland: The Rave, a documentary broadcast by the BBC that explored Scotland’s rave and PCDJ culture, subsequently nominated for a BAFTA Scotland and RTS Scotland Award 2022. His second documentary series, Street Gangs, where Graeme reflects on his own past as an ex-gang member to try to understand life inside a modern gang, aired on the BBC in October 2023.
In 2023, Graeme was chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, an accolade that is awarded once a decade.
RAVEHEART
Literary Fiction, 419 pages
4th Estate, 2026
A high NRG, whip-smart look at the state of modern Britain through the eyes of a disparate band of rave rebels, from the author of the acclaimed, bestselling debut The Young Team and one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.
William Patterson – better known as DJ Turbo – is living a dystopian nightmare after his glory days as resident spinner at a local Coatbridge ice rink, The Time Capsule, have been snatched from him. As an ultranationalist regime sweeps to power, ‘The New Greatest Britishest Party’ cracks down on youth culture, drugs and – the final straw – electronica. Incensed by a blanket ban of their beloved tunes, Turbo and his comrades launch a rave revolt – resurrecting the illegal warehouse parties of the past in this new darker, monolithic Greatest Britain, as a powerful act of resistance.
But, as the political situation escalates and secret police surveil every corner of society, Turbo and his troops fly ever closer to the sun in the dangerous world of the anti-rave abolition paramilitary. Mixing euphoric anthems, psychotropic chemicals and peaceful insurrection, they will fight the war of the rave. Deciding who to trust – and who may betray the cause – is everything. The future of the whole nation is on the line … can Turbo be the hero not just of rave, but of Scotland?
Hilarious, tragic and incredibly clever all at once, this narcotic trip of a novel is a meta, mayhem-filled, cultural coup d'état and cult classic in the making, from one of the most electrifying young writers in Britain today.
THE YOUNG TEAM
Literary Fiction, 385 pages
Picador, 2020
Azzy Williams is ready. Ready to smoke, pop pills, drink wine and ready to fight. But most of all, he’s ready to do anything for his friends, his gang, his young team.
Round here, in the schemes of the forgotten industrial heartland of Scotland, your mates, your young team – they’re everything.
Inspired by the experiences of its author, Graeme Armstrong, THE YOUNG TEAM is an energetic novel, full of the loyalty, laughs, mischief, boredom, violence and threat of life on these streets. It looks beyond the tabloid stereotypes to tell a powerful story about the realities of life for young people in Britain today.
