The Young Team: Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023

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Armstrong’s influences are varied, from movie director Ken Loach to the books of David Keenan, an Airdrie author who wrote “about the punk band landscape of the 1970s and 1980s and it’s weird, narcotic and beautiful. He writes like a Russian master but is from just up the road.” Another, less obvious source of inspiration was provided by 2001 PlayStation game Max Payne. Community justice exhibition opens at University of Stirling | About". University of Stirling. 20 October 2021 . Retrieved 17 October 2023. a b "Graeme Armstrong – Standard English is oor Second Language". Literature Alliance Scotland . Retrieved 24 May 2023. Armstrong left gang life behind when he was 16 after a friend died of a heroin overdose. “His funeral was traumatic,” he recalls. “You can’t help superimposing your mother’s face on to his and yourself into the coffin. I was in a very dark place, surrounded by death and destruction and that’s when I found Trainspotting. It mattered to me and I decided to stay in school and try to go to university. That road would take another five years but it wasn’t until finding faith on Christmas Eve 2012 that I finally managed to defeat my own drug addiction and take those first steps away from gang life. This Christmas makes 10 years drug free. I’m grateful. I’m still praying and I’m still here. Many aren’t. These stories don’t often have happy endings.”

Azzy Williams. He cares. Deep down, he does. The hash numbs you. Daily smoking does that to you. Azzy Williams gets into fights. He gets hurt, his friends get hurt, and the passage of time leads to what was once a comforting drinking spot with your pals, the cemetery, to being the only place you’ll ever see them again. How did you get here? At the 2023 Education Scotland 'Scottish Attainment Challenge' conference, Armstrong gave a keynote speech based around his lived experience of education, gang violence and recovery from addiction and substance misuse. [22] Ex-gang member and Young Team author Graeme Armstrong on the lonely road to redemption". HeraldScotland. 7 March 2020 . Retrieved 15 May 2023. Our conversation comes full circle as Armstrong contemplates how his school days shaped his future, Trainspotting aside. “When I started telling teachers I was going to study English at university it was met with healthy scepticism. One teacher said there was too much reading for someone like me and another told me to just leave school. But I hung on.”

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He occasionally sold drugs and saved up his lunch money for his weekend cargo. By the time he was 15, he had spent several weekends in the cells for various offences including assault and breach of the peace. Granta: Eleanor Catton and Saba Sams make Best of Young British Novelists list". BBC News. 13 April 2023 . Retrieved 15 May 2023. They’re more likely to be inspired by London gang culture nowadays, he said, listening to "drill and grime" music instead of happy hardcore. They carry iPhones and have more money. They dress differently.

But are the young teams as much of a thing today? Graeme said they’ve not gone away: They just wear a different guise. Absolutely. I think part of the seductive nature of gangs is that there is a brotherhood between gang members. It’s a tough environment, a very masculine environment, where young men are under intense pressure to put up these hard fronts. In the brotherhood of a gang setting you find safety in numbers, but also camaraderie. In my own experience, when I stopped hanging about with gangs and stopped taking drugs and moved to the city, I felt a kind of loneliness. Graeme joined the “hated but rated” local gang Lang El Toi and rose through the ranks, continuing down the same troubled path that led to his expulsion from his previous school. Writer who left life of violence behind to present BBC Scotland gang culture series". The Scotsman. 5 April 2023 . Retrieved 15 May 2023. The TV adaptation of Armstrong’s Times-bestselling and Waterstone’s Book of the Month novel will follow Azzy during three crucial years of his life, looking at the world through his eyes as he navigates Scottish masculinity, gang violence, substance abuse, mental health, male suicide and murder.a b "New BBC documentary on 'young team' culture to air next week". Glasgow Times. 25 September 2023 . Retrieved 26 September 2023. They are telling me they see their own lives in this book and that kindles a sense of worth they didn’t have before. That’s a beautiful thing.” Armstrong added: “I am absolutely buzzing to be working with Claire Mundell at Synchronicity and the team to develop ‘The Young Team’ for the screen. Their understanding of the landscape, both geographical and cultural, has made for an exciting coming together of multiple talents. Screenwriter Ben Tagoe has first-hand understanding of the transition of U.K. youth culture from ’80s terrace casuals and rave pioneers into the new and darker world of ‘00s Scottish young team gang culture. Azzy Williams makes better choices. We’re with Azzy as he grows. As his mental health worsens, Azzy seeks help. He gets a pamphlet. There’s a surprise, said no one ever who’s ever tried to access support for their mental health here. Azzy tries his best. He’s an opportunist, for the good and the bad. His register changes. You talk a bit more proper, or as my cousin told me once: “ye sound lit a fanny”. It happens, the more you get away from your upbringing and the more you feel you have to prove your intelligence, prove to others you’re more than just a kid from the schemes. Azzy encounters folk like that. He knows. He is passionate about his work with the Violence Reduction Unit and Community Justice Scotland, hosting workshops about crime and gang culture in schools and prisons. Graeme is a passionate believer in the power of literature to help reform the lives of offenders; his book is being taught at English class in Barlinnie.

Azzy dreams of another life. He faces his toughest fight of all – the fight for a different future.

Graeme Armstrong is a Scottish writer from Airdrie. His teenage years were spent within North Lanarkshire’s gang culture. Alongside overcoming struggles with drug addiction, alcohol abuse and violence, he read English as an undergraduate at the University of Stirling; where he returned to study a Masters’ in Creative Writing. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Strathclyde. I’d had a great childhood which I threw away for a life of gangs and drugs. My time, money and energy had been spent on drugs. It had got to the stage where I was on my own with nothing left to fill up my time to keep me sane.

Graeme Armstrong appears at Waterstones, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, on 5 Mar and Aye Write! festival, Glasgow, on 12 Mar Two Strathclyders on once-a-decade Best Young British Novelists list". www.strath.ac.uk. University of Strathclyde. 18 April 2023 . Retrieved 15 May 2023.Ready to smoke, pop pills and drink wine, and he’s 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 former industrial heartland of Scotland, your troops, your young team- they’re everything”