Lesley McDowell

Lesley McDowell is a literary critic for The Herald, The Scotsman and The Independent on Sunday. Her latest book, Unfashioned Creatures, is a gothic novel set in the 1820s based on a young woman – a real-life friend of Mary Shelley – who is suffering from her husband’s mental health disorders, and an ambitious young doctor who hopes to make a name for himself in the emerging science of psychiatry.

Lesley is based in Glasgow and has a PhD from Glasgow University on the work of James Joyce and feminist theory. Her first novel was The Picnic (2007). Her second book, Between the Sheets: The Literary Liaisons of Nine 20th-Century Women Writers, was shortlisted for the non-fiction prize in the 2011 Scottish Book Awards. She has been the recipient of two Creative Scotland writing bursaries and will be Writer-in-Residence at Gladstones Library in May, 2013.