Transcript / LoLT: The Witches of Scotland Tartan and Two New Books — 04 April 2025

This is a transcription of LoLT: The Witches of Scotland Tartan and Two New Books — 04 April 2025

[cheerful music]

Melissa: Coming up, a sci-fi riff on the Canterbury Tales.

David: A massacre. A journal. And something not quite dead.

Melissa: Plus, our Distraction of the Week. I’m Mel.

David: I’m Dave. This is The Library of Lost Time.

Melissa: One of my favorite books I’ve read for Strong Sense of Place is ‘Spoonbenders’ by Daryl Gregory. I recommended it in our Chicago episode. It’s a mischievous novel about a very unusual family with superhuman powers — one is psychic, another is a human lie detector, that kind of thing. Hearing that, you’re probably thinking sci-fi — and you’re not wrong — but the superhero-y aspects are an action-packed trick to lure you into a heartwarming and very funny family story. Daryl Gregory’s imagination is super fun, and he writes characters that nestle right into your heart.

Melissa: All this time, I’ve kind of thought of this book and its author as unsung heroes. But I went poking around his website. Turns out, lots of people are aware of his writerly skills. He’s been nominated for all the big sci-fi awards, he won the Shirley Jackson award, and his books have appeared on best fiction lists from NPR, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and The Washington Post.

Melissa: His new one seems to be headed in that direction, too. Reviews have called it a heady, entertaining treat and a marvel. It’s ‘When We Were Real,’ a quirky road trip novel set in an alternate United States. In the world of the book, seven years ago, we were all informed that we were living in a simulation. Now, two long-time friends are reeling from a cancer diagnosis and decide to take one last road trip. They’re going on a bus tour called ‘North America’s Impossibles’ — it’s a week-long romp through glitches, anomalies, and miracles that appeared on that fateful Announcement Day. And because this is Daryl Gregory, it’s not just a riff on the classic road trip novel, it’s also a fresh take on the Canterbury Tales. The other passengers are a motley crew that includes two nuns and a rabbi, a professor who ran from a murder scene, a pregnant influencer on a quest to make her child famous, and someone referred to in the first chapter as THE READER.

Melissa: I read the first chapter last night, and I was immediately hooked. We’ve started reading for Season 7 of Strong Sense of Place, but I’m very tempted to clear my schedule for a day and read this book in one go. I fully expect that Daryl Gregory will take readers on a big adventure, then kick them in the teeth with feelings — just like he did in ‘Spoonbenders’ — and I want it. I want to be kicked in the teeth with feelings.

Melissa: If you live near the Pacific Northwest, good news! Daryl Gregory is doing book events in your neck of the woods in April, then he’ll be in New York City in May, including a stop at the wonderful P&T Knitwear bookshop, which I’ve talked about in previous podcasts.

Melissa: I’ll put links to his tour dates and an excerpt from the book in show notes. It’s ‘When We Were Real’ by Daryl Gregory.

David: If you’re the kind of reader who likes a little weird horror in your history — something that’s rich in atmosphere, and full of literal and emotional ghosts — I’ve got a book you might like. It’s ‘The Buffalo Hunter Hunter’ by Stephen Graham Jones.

David: The book is part historical fiction, part horror, part literary fiction. All layered together like Russian nesting dolls with sharp, pointy teeth. It kicks off with a university lecturer. He’s on the verge of losing his job. His career is just about to fall apart when he comes across an old bound journal hidden in the wall of a parsonage that’s being renovated. The journal is a hundred-years old, and it’s got a creepy confession from a Lutheran pastor.

David: From there, the story jumps back to 1912. We are told a story by a two different characters. The history there starts with a massacre of native Americans that almost everyone has since forgotten. There are vampires on the frontier with strange and terrifying abilities. They are the ‘Buffalo Hunter Hunter’ of the title. Things get bloody.

David: The book was written by Stephen Graham Jones. He’s both a member of the Blackfeet tribe and a professor of English at the University of Colorado. His books frequently explore indigenous identity, but he also usually writes what I would think of as genre fiction. So, you’ll get thoughtful explorations of history and survival and justice, right next to weird supernatural things that bite and some high-level writing. His books are both illuminating and unnerving, and he’s won a shelf full of awards for them.

David: ‘The Buffalo Hunter Hunter’ is smart and intense and occasionally darkly funny. It’s the kind of book that expects you to keep up, but, if you do, you’ll be rewarded with a story that is strange and fierce.

David: It reminds me a bit of ‘The Historian’ by Elizabeth Kostova with its layered storytelling, and vampire hunting, and its cultural references — just transplanted out to the American West. If that sounds like your thing, you might want to check it out. It’s ‘The Buffalo Hunter Hunter’ by Stephen Graham Jones.

David: And now our Distraction of the Week.

Melissa: Earlier this year, I heard five words that captured my attention: The Witches of Scotland Tartan. Those are three things I love: Scotland, witches, and plaid.

Melissa: And then I saw a sample of it. It’s a black background with wide gray stripes and narrow bands of red and pink. I was instantly smitten and began looking for where I could buy a pleated skirt as soon as possible.

Melissa: And that’s when I learned this plaid is even more badass than it looks.

Melissa: The tartan is part of the Witches of Scotland project. That’s a campaign launched on International Women’s Day in 2020 by two women: a lawyer named Claire Mitchell and the writer Zoe Venditozzi. They’re on a mission for justice for victims of Scotland’s Witchcraft Act.

Melissa: Between 1563 and 1736, thousands of people, mostly women, were convicted of witchcraft and executed in Scotland. Mitchell and Venditozzi have three goals: an apology, a legal pardon, and a national monument for the 2500 victims of the Witchcraft Act.

Melissa: To that end, they’ve been making the Witches of Scotland podcast since 2020. In each episode, they explore stories from the Scottish witch hunts with historians, writers, artists, and legal experts from around the world.

Melissa: They’ve also got a book coming out in September. It’s called ‘How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women’ — it’s available for pre-order now. I clicked that button in a nanosecond.

Melissa: In 2022, they achieved one of their goals. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, formally apologized, saying, ‘Those who met this fate were not witches, they were people’ and that it was an ‘injustice on a colossal scale.’ The Church of Scotland also apologized for its role in the witch hunts.

Melissa: But the question of a physical monument to the victims was challenging. What kind of memorial should they create? Where should it be located? While attending an exhibit about tartan at a museum, they had a flash of inspiration. They decided to make a new tartan to honor the victims.

Melissa: Every element of the tartan design is imbued with meaning. The black and gray represent the dark times of that period and the ashes of the people who were burned. The red represents the victims’ blood, and the pink signifies the tape that was used to bind legal documents back then and now.

Melissa: The thread counts mean something, too. The large black squares of the plaid are made from 173 threads — that’s the number of years the law was in effect. The thinner lines have either 15 or 17 threads. 15 is the sum of the digits of 1563, the year the act was passed… and 17 is the sum of the digits of 1736, the year it was repealed. The red and pink stripes are repeated three times to represent the campaign’s three goals.

Melissa: Claire Mitchell, one of the founders, said she loved creating it because, as a woman who always speaks her mind, she’s pretty sure she would have been one of the people targeted by the law.

Melissa: In February of this year, the design was officially registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans. The plan is to start making kilts from the tartan in May. Part of the proceeds will go to charity, and everyone who wears the tartan will be part of a living memorial to the victims of the Witchcraft Act.

Melissa: Visit strongsenseofplace.com/library for more on the books we talked about today and details about how to get your hands on that fabulously witchy and very meaningful tartan.

David: Thanks for joining us in the Libary of Lost Time. Remember to visit your local library and your independent bookstore to lose some time yourself.

Melissa: Stay curious. We’ll talk to you soon.

[cheerful music]

Top image courtesy of Witches of Scotland.