Donald Smith

Donald Smith is Director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre, a post he has held since 2001 when the organisation was launched. Prior to his, he had been director of the Netherbow Arts Centre.

Smith was born in Glasgow, but was a “son of the Manse” and lived in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling; he spent his summers in Northern Ireland, which helped awaken his appreciation of the Scots language after his very formal English-language upbringing. Smith studied English Literature and Classical Greek at the University of Edinburgh in the 1970s; later, he took a PhD.

As a playwright, his first play, The Bothy, was produced in 1986; most recently Jekyll and Hyde: A Specimen for the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature project. His first novel, The English Spy, was published in 2007. His most recent books were both about Robert Burns – the novel Between Ourselves, and the biography God, The Poet and the Devil – both 2009.

Donald Smith is married with five children.