Kevin MacNeil

Kevin MacNeil is an award-winning novelist, playwright and poet, originally from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, but now living and working in Edinburgh. He studied at the University there, and has also taught Creative Writing at Edinburgh University.

MacNeil’s first poetry collection Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides won the Tivoli Europa Giovani International Poetry Prize in 2001, and he has held a number of writing residences in Europe, including in Uppsala University and the Villa Concordia in Bavaria. His debut novel The Stornoway Way was an instant bestseller. His latest novel, A Method Actor’s Guide to Jekyll and Hyde, is set in Edinburgh.

Kevin MacNeil is a founder member of the trip-hop poetry band Tommorrowscope, and he regularly collaborates with artists, musicians and fellow poets, and is due to release an album with William Campbell in 2010.

In September 2009 he cycled 1300km of the river Danube, from its source to Budapest, to raise money for two cancer charters. The BBC filmed a documentary about his journey, and he is also working on a book about the trip.