Douglas Stuart in Conversation with Aaron Hicklin
Tuesday 1st September / 6pm - 8.15pm
£15
Join us for an unforgettable evening with Booker Prize-winning author Douglas Stuart to discuss his deeply moving new novel John of John…
With the intensity and raw truth that made Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo modern classics, his recently published third novel explores themes of class, family, masculinity and sexuality, set among the rural community of the Hebrides.
Renowned US editor and writer Aaron Hicklin joins Stuart to delve into his choice of place, exploring ideas of identity and resilience, and touching upon the author’s work to date. There will be an opportunity for audience questions and Douglas will be signing books at the end of the event.
Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity to hear Douglas Stuart live and to ask your question in the audience Q&A!
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John of John by Douglas Stuart
Picador, May 2026
Everything he owned fit into a backpack and one doubled bin bag. It had taken him less than ten minutes to pack up four years of his life. It had taken a little longer to fold himself away, to hide all the bits of himself that had slowly been unfurling since he had arrived on the mainland. In truth, he had not changed that much since he had been at college, and as he roamed the ferry he wondered if he had always known he would be forced to come home eventually.
Out of money and with little to show for his art school years on the mainland, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home, called back by his father to the island of Harris. In the windswept croft in which he grew up, Cal reluctantly resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer , weaver , and pillar of the local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.
While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the island’s hillsides, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding the community together become increasingly entangled.
In a narrative both tender and unflinching, Douglas Stuart continues and deepens his exploration of masculinity and the silent struggle of lives lived under a watchful, judgmental eye. John of John examines the weight of family expectation, the painful compromises people make for love, the lies they tell themselves and one another in order to survive, and the profound cost of a life unlived. It confirms Douglas Stuart’s reputation as one of the most vital voices in contemporary fiction.
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Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York where he began a career in fashion design. Shuggie Bain, his first novel, won the Booker Prize and both Debut of the Year and Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Award, and in 2025 was selected by The Sunday Times as one of the ‘best novels of the twenty-first century’ as well as one of the ten best Booker winners of all time by the Daily Telegraph. His second novel, Young Mungo, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller . His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, and ‘Love, Hope & Grit’ the Imagine documentary Douglas made with the late Alan Yentob, is available on the BBC iPlayer. Douglas Stuart lives in New York.
Aaron Hicklin, author and journalist, has been editor of Black Book, Out and Document and has written for The Guardian and The New York Times, amongst many other publications. Aaron launched One Grand Books in 2015 - based in the U.S. this is a curated bookstore in which celebrated thinkers, writers, artists and other creative minds share the ten books they would take to their metaphorical desert island. Aaron also produces and hosts a regular podcast Shelf Life, in which he interviews authors and actors about their two favourite books.