Recent press at a glance
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Recent Press
“…an incantational group biography…Shaw passes over centuries-old footsteps like fingers on Braille; the lilt of her voice on the page is lyrical magic.”
—The New York Times
Shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Christopher Bland Prize 2024
Waterstone’s Scottish Book of the Month, Sept. 2023
Product Magazine’s Best Non-fiction of 2023
Ashes & Stones is shortlisted by the Royal Society of Literature for the Christopher Bland Prize 2024. See the announcement in The Bookseller and at the RSL Website.
Renowned true crime author Carol Ann Lee has a round up of witchy. nonfiction on Bookshop.orghttps://uk.bookshop.org/lists/carol-ann-lee-something-wicked-this-way-comes. Her new book, Something Wicked: The Lives, Crimes and Deaths of the Pendle Witches, is just out. Of Ashes & Stones she writes:
This is a remarkable book alive with the beauty and terror of Scotland centuries earlier – as if the author reached out a hand and took the reader with her on that journey…The delicate balance between Allyson Shaw’s inner life and personal reasons for making the journey set against the stories of those whose lives were lost is beautifully rendered, while the writing throughout is sublime. —Carol Ann Lee, Author of Something Wicked and A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story.
Laura Splan & Allyson Shaw’s zines in Hyperallergic piece by Maya Pontone, in the lead up to the Brooklyn Museum’s Copy Machine Manifesto show on from November 18th, 2023.
Ashes & Stones on the Herstory on the Rocks Podcast.
“Ashes and Stones is a powerful travelogue that revisits the history of the witch trials in Scotland. The intimacy of Shaw’s musings, and the parallels that she draws between the victims of the witch trials and the realities that many modern women face, make this a consequential history text. It stands to change the ways that people view those who were killed. And it honors women who were neither supernatural nor evil, but who were human and deserving of remembrance as such.”—
Foreward Reviews
12th May, 2023–I’m on episode 11 of Betwixt the Sheets with Dr. Kate Lister, aka @whoresofyore talking about my research into the Scottish witch hunts. Listen here.
“Unlike any other book you’ll read this year”
“This is not the book you think it is, and it is all the better for it.”
—Snack Magazine, March 2023
Francesca Brown. “8 Unmissable Witchy Books for 2023” & “The Biggest Book Trend for 2023: Why ‘Witchlit’ is Hitting a Nerve Right Now.” Feb. 2023 Issue of The Stylist.
Ashes & Stones is one of “10 Scottish Books for 2023” in the February issue of Snack Magazine.
Interview with Alistair Braidwood on the Scots Whay Hae! Podcast. 3rd February, 2023
Except of Ashes and Stones in Books From Scotland, Myth Makers Issue, January 2023.
Scots Whay Hae! Book of the Week 21/1/23. (A&S @ 22:00)
“My Favourite Place,” Interview in The Herald Saturday Magazine by Susan Swarbrick. 28.1.23
Teddy Jamieson, “On The Radar, Books”. The Herald, 14th January, 2023. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23244723.radar-reinventing-world-harmony/
Ashes & Stones, Allyson Shaw, Sceptre, £18.99, published Thursday
Subtitled “A Scottish Journey in Search of Witches and Witness”, Allyson Shaw’s new book is a tour around the country and trek into a turbulent past of witch trials and executions. Shaw visits modern memorials, roadside shrines and standing stones from Banff to Bo’ness as she tells the story of one of Scotland’s more shameful legacies.
–Teddy Jamiesone, The Herald
Press Release
Allyson Shaw, Author of Ashes and Stones 