Originally from Northern Italy, Luca Serra has been living in Scotland for thirteen years. From an early age, he has been interested in creative activities such as writing and painting. He has dedicated himself to writing for about fifteen years and has so far written four novels and various short stories in Italian and English. In January 2020 he received the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for Fiction. Since early 2021 he became a literary editor and mentor at Product Magazine, where he mentors emerging writers as part of the "Write Here, Write Now" programme. He currently teaches literacy and Creative Writing at HMP Glenochil.
Luca is particularly interested in contemporary social issues such as immigration, identity, and the divisive politics of today. Through his writing, he aims to explore the challenges and experiences that come with moving to new, unfamiliar places and how the characters establish their identity and purpose in those places. His characters are often misfits and minorities who pull out the remarkable and, sometimes, absurd in ordinary, day-to-day lives.
This Is Home, his debut English novel, was published by Leamington Books in January 2026.
This Is Home is a vivid, multivoiced story cycle that follows characters forging new lives far from where they began. Serra’s novel moves between London and Glasgow, tracing the emotional landscapes of migration, friendship, and the fragile search for belonging.
You can read more about This Is Home on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel.
A Friday stroll on Sauchiehall street is never just a stroll. Brunilda had got used to it. You might exchange a smile with perfect strangers, often locals, carrying amicable manners in their blood, well proud of the definition "Scotland’s friendliest city," well proud of being one of those "People Make Glasgow" people. Then, a block away, you might witness the first puke of the weekend, vile fruit of a 2pm football drinking session. 1.6 miles of buskers, beggars, reckless youths, hen parties, leaving parties, stag dos, today’s neds and punks, tomorrow’s artists. It’s home of immigrants young and old, hipsters, rebels, people with no tribe, everyone belonging to a huge, infinite family: the Glaswegians. It’s a street of no structure, a street of pure, erratic life.
Brunilda often wondered what her role was on those 1.6 miles of walking stories. She watched and absorbed, taking in words, phrases and scenes to share with mum and grandma, one day, back in Brazil, home: the only place where she felt that unique, visceral sense of belonging. Brazil was everything she had been so far, her foundation and youth. Glasgow was the present, the moment, and although it was growing in her, it retained the shapes, lights and colours of an unfamiliar place. She didn’t see herself chatting away with a busker or consoling a kid who’s fallen off the bike: she felt like she’d be stepping on somebody else’s toes. As consequences of actions were unpredictable, she simply attended that daily march of pure, erratic life, rather than participated. She was a passive spectator.
