Shane Strachan was awarded Scots Champion at the 2023 Scots Language Awards following his year as the National Library of Scotland’s Scots Scriever writer-in-residence.
Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath in 1945, but spent most of her childhood in Kingston-on-Thames. She always wanted to be a writer and wrote her first ‘novel’ when she was nine, filling in countless …
Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Because of her father's job as an Engineer, the family followed the north sea oil boom of the seventies around Europe She left school at sixteen and did a numbe…
Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for Fir…
Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE, was an English novelist. She was an actress and a model before becoming a novelist. In 1951, she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit.…
Claire Douglas always wanted to write novels and, after many years of trying to get published, her dream came true when she won the Marie Claire Debut Novel Award in 2013 with THE SISTERS.
Robert Renwick Mortimer is an English comedian, podcast presenter and actor. He is known for his work with Vic Reeves as part of their Vic and Bob comedy double act, and more recently the Mortimer & W…
Katherine Rundell was born in 1987 and grew up in Africa and Europe. In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her first book, The Girl Savage, was born of her love of Zimbabwe an…
John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet who first became famous during the punk rock era of the late 1970s when he became known as a "punk poet". He released several a…
Alice Oseman is an award-winning author, illustrator, and screenwriter, and was born in 1994 in Kent, England. She has written four YA contemporary novels about teenage disasters: SOLITAIRE, RADIO SIL…
Max Porter’s first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers won the Sunday Times/Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Europese Literatuurprijs and …
Cara Hunter is a writer who lives in Oxford, in a street not unlike those featured in her series of crime books. Close to Home is her debut featuring DI Adam Fawley, and her second, In the Dark, is co…
Yomi Adegoke is a British journalist and author. She has written for The Guardian, The Independent and the Pool. Of Nigerian heritage, Adegoke was born in East London and raised in Croydon. She attende…
Deborah Masson was born and bred in Aberdeen, Scotland. Always restless and fighting against being a responsible adult, Deborah worked in several jobs including Secretarial, Marketing, Reporting for t…
The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern was elected the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand at the age of thirty-seven, becoming the country’s youngest Prime Minister in more than 150 years. Since lea…
Janice Hallett is a former magazine editor, award-winning journalist, and government communications writer. She wrote articles and speeches for, among others, the Cabinet Office, Home Office, and Depa…
Cailean Steed is a writer, teacher and aspiring dog owner who lives in Helensburgh with their husband and son. They have also resided in Aberdeen and Dublin, and hope one day to live somewhere with le…
Mirinae Lee was born and grew up in Seoul. Her debut novel, '8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster,' has been longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing…
Len Pennie is a Scottish poet and Scots language and mental health advocate. She became known on social media in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland for her "Scots word of the day" and poem …
I found myself falling into the world of writing almost by accident. My blogging friends at university were applying for swanky magazine internships, and I decided I should probably do something usefu…
