Graeme Armstrong (author)
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Graeme Armstrong (born 1991) is a Scottish author best known for his debut novel, The Young Team. The novel won the Betty Trask Award, Somerset Maugham Award, and was named 'Scots Book of the Year' in 2021. The Young Team is currently being adapted for television by Synchronicity Films and has been commissioned as a BBC drama production as of March, 2025. Armstrong has been announced as screenwriter and executive producer.
In 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their 'Best of Young British Novelists' list, an honour presented every decade to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty years old.
Armstrong's second novel, Raveheart, will be published by 4th Estate (imprint) at HarperCollins in June 2026. It is being adapted for screen by Warp Films, (This Is England, Dead Man's Shoes and Adolescence) and is a dystopian rave comedy.
Biography
Armstrong is from Airdrie, Scotland. As a teenager he was involved in North Lanarkshire's 'young team' territorial gang culture as a member of the Young Mavis, from Glenmavis. At fourteen, he was expelled from Airdrie Academy and began attending Coatbridge High School, where he joined another gang, the Lang El Toi (LL TOI) from Langloan, Coatbridge.
Armstrong is a lifelong supporter of Scottish football side Rangers F.C.
Aged sixteen, following the deaths of three friends by heroin overdose and after reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, Armstrong pursued a route of higher education, and began to break away from gang life. During his time in gangs, he struggled with alcohol abuse, drug addiction and violence. Armstrong "stopped taking drugs on Christmas Day 2012" and speaks candidly about having a Christian faith. His experiences inspired his debut novel, The Young Team, a work of social realism, written in West Central Scots language.
In 2013, Armstrong received a 2:1 Bachelor of Arts undergraduate degree in English Studies from the University of Stirling and returned there to complete a Master of Letters in Creative Writing, graduating with Merit in 2015. As of 2023, he is currently undertaking a PhD between the University of Strathclyde and The University of Glasgow.
In 2021, Armstrong wrote and appeared in a short film for the Edinburgh International Book Festival Infectious Nihilism and Small Metallic Pieces of Hope directed by James Price. Later that year, he presented a BBC documentary, Scotland the Rave with IWC Media, subsequently nominated for a BAFTA Scotland and Royal Television Society Scotland awards.
During the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2023, Armstrong hosted James Kelman and spoke around difficulties in working-class representation, "cultural banishment" and Kelman's new work, 'God's Teeth and Other Phenomena'.
Armstrong wrote and presented a three-part BBC Scotland documentary series, Street Gangs exploring current Scottish gang culture, including the recent impact of social media, Drill music / Roadman culture, and his lived experience as an ex-gang member, which aired on television in October 2023 and was featured on BBC iPlayer.
Armstrong is an ambassador for The Hope Collective, a London-based anti-violence organisation, formed originally to support the 20th anniversary legacy campaign for Damilola Taylor.
In June 2024, New College Lanarkshire inducted Armstrong as an honorary lecturer to celebrate the launch of their Undergraduate School in partnership with the University of the West of Scotland, offering the first degree level study in North Lanarkshire, alongside others including author and broadcaster Damian Barr, a fellow North Lanarkshire native.
Later in 2024, Armstrong joined a panel of experts at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) national conference alongside Karyn McCluskey and Maureen McKenna OBE to discuss early intervention and prevention, where First Minister of Scotland John Swinney also delivered an address.
As of 2025, Armstrong runs a violence prevention educational event programme, 'Street Belonging', for school pupils, leaders and in the prison estate across Scotland, working with organisations such as Community Justice Scotland and Medics Against Violence. He is an associate for the Children and Young People's Centre for Justice and currently sits on the Strategic Advisory Board for the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit
Awards and honours
In April 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their "Best of Young British Novelists" list, an honour presented every ten years "to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty."
| Year | Title | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | The Young Team | Betty Trask Prize and Awards | Betty Trask Award | Won | |
| Scots Language Awards | Scots Book of the Year | Won | |||
| Saltire Society Literary Awards | Scottish First Book of the Year | Shortlisted | |||
| Somerset Maugham Award | — | Won | |||
| 2022 | Scotland the Rave | BAFTA Scotland | Single Documentary | Nominated | |
| RTS Scotland | Documentary and Specialist Factual | Nominated | |||
| The Cloud Factory | Granta Best of Young British Novelists | — | Won |
Publication
Novels
- The Young Team (Picador, 2020)
- Raveheart (4th Estate, forthcoming 06/26)
Short works
- Landit (The Middle of a Sentence: Short Prose Anthology, The Common Breath, 2020)
- The Jakit, Mysticism n PPK Resurrection (Scottish Book Trust, 2022)
- The Cloud Factory (Granta, 2023)
Translated
- La Gang - Italian translation of The Young Team (Guanda, 2021)
- The Young Team - Spanish translation (Automática Editorial, 2022)
Filmography
- Scotland the Rave – single documentary (IWC Media, 2021)
- Street Gangs – documentary series (Tern Media, 2023)