About

I am a writer and editor originally from the north of Scotland and now based in Kyiv (since April 2023) and London (since 2016). I write about Russia’s invasion of the country for an ever-growing range of publications, with the National, Rolling Stone and the Face among those I’ve written for from here during the first year of the war. My work as a music, travel, culture and international affairs journalist has been published by the Guardian and Observer, Resident Advisor, the Independent, Mixmag, Time Out, Vice, Thump, the Sunday Herald, XLR8R, Electronic Beats, Metro and many others. 

My music and travel writing has taken me to Mexico, Lebanon, Uganda, Rwanda, Panama, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Greenland and many other fascinating places. I love writing long-form features about music, and my Resident Advisor pieces on Rub-A-Dub and Copenhagen's fast-techno scene were particularly wonderful recent obsessions. I spent summer 2019 in Berlin working at the respected daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung as part of the George Weidenfeld Bursary International Journalists’ Programme.

Prior to my work in Ukraine I reported on mass protests and official corruption in Romania and Georgia and maintained a special interest in the politics and culture of the Middle East. I have also presented panel discussions at music conferences in Colombia, Spain, the UK and elsewhere, written bios for many bands, producers and DJs and done various types of copywriting work.

As an editor I have worked on every kind of content imaginable but am most regularly found on the sports desk at the Guardian and the Observer, where I have also somehow become known as the go-to person in the office for frantically pulled-together post-match quotes pieces with a total turnaround window of three-and-a-half minutes. In the days of Myspace and nu-rave I was clubs editor at Metro, and later music editor at the National.

– April 2023