David Manderson

David Manderson was born in 1955 in Westerton, a suburban village to the north of Glasgow. He attended the local primary school and then the Glasgow Academy in the city’s west end. In 1973 he became a student at St Andrew’s University, graduating with an MA in English Language and Literature in 1977.

After university he worked in a variety of jobs including office clerk, warehouse manager before leaving the UK to travel on the road with the Scottish folk band The Tannahill Weavers. Returning to Scotland after two years, he became a lecturer in Further Education, working in colleges for many years. In 1992 he founded the Real to Reel Short Film Festival, which ran at the Glasgow Film Theatre for nine years. In 2002 he launched the creative writing magazine Nerve, supported by the Scottish Arts Council, which ran for five issues.

In 1998 he attended Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities’ famous MLitt in Creative Writing, and subsequently registered for a PhD at Strathclyde University, and for his thesis wrote the dark psychological thriller Lost Bodies. It was the first full-length work of fiction to be awarded a PhD in Scotland.

David joined the newly created University of the West of Scotland in 2007 as a lecturer in Creative Writing and Screenwriting, where he began to devise courses, give talks and publish articles, short stories and essays. By now he was publishing widely in international anthologies, collections and journals. He also wrote two Scotnotes about Scottish films for the Association of Scottish Literary Studies.

In 2011 Lost Bodies was accepted for publication by Kennedy and Boyd, an established independent publisher. It was released in July of that year. In 2012 he published his second book Best Man, which deals with themes of love, friendship, work, sex and death, with the Pothole Press. He is currently working on a range of projects including screenplays, works of non-fiction and a second novel which is due for release in 2013. He lives in Glasgow with his family.