They say that school is the best time of your life, and it’s certainly a formative experience for us all. Authors Ely Percy and Kirkland Ciccone join forces to discuss the teenage years that their fiction centres on, and why those years are so pivotal to explore in fiction.

Duck Feet is a coming-of-age novel set in mid-noughties Renfrew and Paisley, following the lives of 12-year-old Kirsty Campbell and her friends as they navigate the world from first to sixth year at Renfrew Grammar School – a celebration of working class life in an ever-changing world. In the genre-blending Happiness is Wasted on Me, Cumbernauld is home to Walter Wedgeworth, a child stuck in a uniquely dysfunctional family in the ‘90s, who discovers the corpse of a baby inside a box, resolving to pretend it didn’t happen as he knows the price of being a grass, but that can only last so long.

Two differing tales set in small town Scotland, they’re united in their exploration of the issues of family, identity and finding your sense of self.

Tickets are FREE.

All events in The Scottish Books Long Weekend will be recorded and will be uploaded to the Publishing Scotland YouTube channel with closed captions on Tuesday 15 June.

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Ely Percy’s first publication was a letter-cum-poem in Big! magazine in 1994. Since then, they’ve released a memoir Cracked (JKP, 2002), contributed over fifty short stories to literary journals, and published two novels Vicky Romeo Plus Joolz (Knight Errant Press, 2019) and Duck Feet (Monstrous Regiment, 2021).

Kirkland Ciccone is a punk, author and performer. He trained in Journalism and PR but quickly discovered live storytelling and writing stories made him much happier. Kirkland also set up Yay YA, a book festival to encourage teens to get off their phones and read books. Other live shows include A Secret History of Cumbernauld and The Dead Don’t Sue. He has previously written quirky fiction for younger readers including Conjuring The Infinite and Glowglass.

Melanie Ramdarshan Bold teaches, researches, and writes about children's and YA literature and book culture at Glasgow University. She was a judge on the UKYA book prize, and is on the Advisory Boards for the CLPE Reflecting Realities project and the Pop-up Pathways into Children’s Publishing project.

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This event is part of the Scottish Books Long Weekend 10 to 13 June. For the full programme, see BooksfromScotland.com/scottish-books-long-weekend/.

Books are available to buy from our bookshop partners Bookshop.org.