West Coast Magazine. was a 3 times a year Scottish literary publication consisting of poetry, short fiction

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

, articles, essays and reviews. Founding editors were Gordon Giles, Kenny MacKenzie and Joe Murray. The proof issue appeared in October 1987 and contained some articles and poems that did not appear in official issues. West Coast Magazine (WCM) was initially funded by East Glasgow Gear Project and Glasgow City Council; ultimately funded by the Scottish Arts Council

Scottish Arts Council

The Scottish Arts Council is a Scottish public body that distributes funding from the Scottish Government, and is the leading national organisation for the funding, development and promotion of the arts in Scotland...

.

WCM was probably the first Scottish literary magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 fully produced pre-press

Prepress

Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing...

 in-house to a professional standard, and was the forerunner, in this sense, for many similar Scottish literary publications that came after it. The main aim of West Coast was to help promote new writers and new writing in Scotland, though it did not exclusively publish Scottish writers or writers resident in Scotland – writers from all over the world contributed to its content. Established writers such as Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...

 (short fiction and poetry), Agnes Owens

Agnes Owens

Agnes Owens is a Scottish author.She was born in Milngavie and spent most of her life on the west coast of Scotland. She has been married twice and raised seven children, also working as a cleaner, typist and factory worker....

 (short fiction and poetry), Janice Galloway

Janice Galloway

Janice Galloway is a writer of novels, short stories, prose-poetry, non-fiction and libretti-Biography:She is the second daughter of James Galloway and Janet Clark McBride. Her parents separated when she was four and her father died when she was six. Her sister Nora, sixteen years older, died in...

 (short fiction), Freddie Anderson

Freddie Anderson

Freddie Anderson was a writer and socialist, born in County Monaghan, Ireland, who became a bedrock of Glasgow culture from the 1950s....

, (articles and poetry), Alison Prince (poetry), Dominic Behan (poetry), James Kelman

James Kelman

James Kelman is an influential writer of novels, short stories, plays and political essays. His novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989...

 (interview and article), Kenneth White (poetry, articles), all of whom also provided great encouragement to the project. New writers who were beginning to produce works of note were featured, such as: Des Dillon (short fiction and poetry), Brian Whittingham (poetry), Jim Ferguson (short fiction and poetry), Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...

 (short fiction) and Graham Fulton

Graham Fulton

History as PoetGraham Fulton is a poet from Scotland. He's been writing and performing poetry since 1987 when he first attended a writers' group run by poet Tom Leonard in Paisley, which also included Jeff Torrington, Brian Whittingham and Suhayl Saadi, and was a founder member of the influential...

(poetry) , among others.

WCM Production Team: John Cunningham (Proof-reader, Distribution and Reviewer), Jan Dalton (Administration, Proof-reader and Reviewer), Maud Devine (Proof-reader and Distribution), Gordon Giles (Typesetting, Layout and Design and Reviewer), Kenny MacKenzie (Typesetting, Layout and Design and Reviewer), Alan Mason (Design), Joe Murray (Typesetting, Layout and Design and Reviewer), Tam O'Hara (Word Processing), Ellen Shearer (Word Processing).

WCM Editorial Staff: due to work commitments Joe Murray left the magazine after helping to complete Issue Three but returned at the publication of Issue Four. Gordon Giles left during production of Issue Six to pursue a career in Community Education; from Issue Nine till Issue Thirteen an editorial board chose most of the work for the magazine. This group consisted of Margaret Fulton Cook, John Cunningham, Graham Fulton, Ronnie Smith and Brian Whittingham with Joe Murray as Managing Editor. Kenny MacKenzie became associate editor from Issue Ten onwards. From Issue Fourteen Joe Murray continued as Managing Editor with Brian Whittingham as poetry editor.

WCM also produced many writers' events such as readings and talks – mainly in pubs – many of these during Glasgow City of Culture festival in 1990.

All of the poetry and poetry reviews published in West Coast Magazine can be found on the Scottish Poetry Library's website

A spin-off of WCM in 1991 was Taranis Books which was successfully edited and managed by Kenny MacKenzie producing around two-dozen books before being put to sleep in 2000.
After a dispute over Arts Council funding, WCM published the final Double Issue (27-28) in 1998.