Over soft shell a tide goes in and out. Imperceptibly. Not exactly a wave, but a growing interest. There are rocks too and they appear to rise and sink. When the water recedes there are little pools, some wet weed and moss. The colours are brown and green and iridescence. What was the bottom shows all manner of glowing sea dust.
Soft Shell is a spoken-word event presented by Art Writing at The Glasgow School of Art.
Shhh: A Soft Shell Broadcast accompanies Soft Shell: Off Air, a performance event and exhibition at Mote in Leith, Edinburgh, 26-27 February 2026, bringing together textual works as part of an immersive audio work.
You are warmly invited to an excursion in loosening method. To an excursion in fragmentation, in digression.
Beth Emsden grew up in the West Midlands, has studied in London and moved to Glasgow. She is not sure how this information is relevant, but it’s what people always want to know—where are you from and what do you do? Beth works part-time in a bakery. She is part-Emsden, part-Gardner, part poet, part queer, part film lover, and part gig-goer. b.emsden@gmail.com
Will Farmer is an artist and writer from Sheffield. His practice reflects on relationships to land, locality and the other-than-human world, questioning our desires and imagination in the face of a troubled future. As nearby ecologies and the global climate descend into increasingly urgent states of emergency, our lives become saturated by grief, hope, joy and confusion. Will works with sound, video, photography and installation to externalise this confusion, alongside a writing practice in fiction and poetry. @will_farmer.wav
Esther Hesketh is an artist, writer and producer based in Glasgow. They work with narrative and material processes to develop sculptural and performative installations, text pieces and audio works. Grounded in objects and the everyday, they draw on domestic spaces, memory and personal histories. I am not going to describe the room; there are thousands like it all over the world and at least six hundred of them are in this building. @byeshesketh
Sophia Kelly-Keegan is an artist and writer from Salford. She has a BA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. Aimed at provoking domestic space and the relationships it tentatively houses, her work embraces a theatrical position where writing sits somewhere between scripts and prose, and is incorporated in pieces of sculpture, video, installation and performance. Her performance at Mote features actors Molly Windust and Archie Barrington. Resume trials, “story of my life” he whines. And then he whines the phrase again. @sophiakellykeegan
Lucille Mona Ling is a writer, artist and graphic designer. Her writing focuses on non-fiction that explores intergenerational memory, diaspora, and the imaginative reconstruction of erased or fragmented histories. Her work has appeared in Gutter, Propel and Pala Press among others. In 2025 she was shortlisted for the Emerging Art Foundation’s Art Writing Prize. Her debut non-fiction pamphlet is forthcoming with Mouse Press in 2026. @inoumena
Emma Mortimer is a writer based in Glasgow. She is interested in photographic processes and queer methodologies, and is currently writing a series of flash fictions. Once a month, Emma runs an open reading night called SHED, where she is exploring what learning/sharing can look like beyond institutions. @emmam0rtimer
Hannah Parkinson is a writer and researcher based in Glasgow. Her work explores the intersections of memory, space and narrative through literary fiction and creative nonfiction, interrogating how place functions as a conduit for individual and collective histories. She is editor and co-founder of the Glasgow-based literary arts zine Big Red Cat Zine. She continues to explore new ways of integrating research, storytelling and lived experience in her practice. @444hannahlouise
Toby Üpson is a writer based in Glasgow. He enjoys the glorious aspects of the mundane. @tobyupsonofficial
Maisie Wills is an art writer from Cornwall, based in Glasgow. Her work interrogates the relationship between text and image through cinematic frameworks. Her recent collaborative project 24 Letters responds to an experimental Super8 film by Esmé Haddrill-Selman. This work-in-progress slips between image and text, asking what it means to capture present experience within the confines of the frame. @_maisiewills
With thanks to Timothea Armour.