Kirstin Innes

Kirsten Innes' novel *Scabby Queen* reframes the life of a radical political activist not through her own eyes, but through a mosaic of 17 fragmented perspectives—friends, lovers, family, and even those who found her dead. The book’s structure mirrors a card game where each player holds a piece of the story, and the final, lonely hand is left holding the last queen. Innes reveals that the novel was born from a real-life trauma: a friend left to discover their flatmate’s body, a moment that haunted her and became the emotional spine of the story. She wrote in stolen moments as a new mother, using Excel spreadsheets and colour-coded notes to manage the non-linear narrative. The novel explores how public figures—especially women—are reduced to 250-word obituaries that erase complexity, a theme inspired by the sudden death of Carrie Fisher, whose fiery late-life activism was instantly sanitized in the media. Innes also draws on real historical events, including undercover police officers who infiltrated radical groups and fathered children with women they were spying on, a story that inspired the heartbreaking character of Sammy. The book’s final chapter, written in Scots from the mother’s point of view, is a raw, stream-of-consciousness confession that challenges the reader to question whether any single version of a life can ever be true. The novel’s journey to publication was itself dramatic—its first edition was missing three chapters, only discovered days before print.