THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

James Crawford is a writer and broadcaster, and Editor-at-Large at Birlinn Ltd. Born in the Shetlands in 1978, he studied History and Philosophy of Law at the University of Edinburgh, winning the Lord President Cooper Memorial Prize. James’s first major work of non-fiction was the critically-acclaimed Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of the World’s Greatest Lost Buildings which was shortlisted for the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He has previously written a number of photographic books, including Above Scotland, Victorian Scotland, Scotland’s Landscapes, and Aerofilms: A History of Britain from Above. In 2018 he scripted and presented ‘Scotland From the Sky’ a landmark, three-part BBC One documentary series. He lives in Edinburgh.

In 2022, Canongate Books published The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World.

Gavin Francis is an award-winning writer and GP. He is the author of four books of non-fiction, including Adventures in Human Being, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and Empire Antarctica, which won Scottish Book of the Year in the SMIT Awards and was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje and Costa Prizes. He has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. His work is published in eighteen languages. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Anna (Nan) Shepherd was born in 1893 and died in 1981. Closely attached to Aberdeen and her native Deeside, she graduated from her home university in 1915 and for the next forty-one years worked as a lecturer in English. An enthusiastic gardener and hill-walker, she made many visits to the Cairngorms with students and friends. She also travelled further afield – to Norway, France, Italy, Greece and South Africa – but always returned to the house where she was raised and where she lived almost all of her adult life, in the village of West Cults, three miles from Aberdeen on North Deeside. To honour her legacy, in 2016, Nan Shepherd was added to the Royal Bank of Scotland £5 note.

Joanna Geyer-Kordesch has a distinguished academic career bridging the disciplines of history of medicine and cultural history as embodied in our landscapes. After Directing The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at Glasgow University from 1990 to 2001, she became Professor of European Natural History and Medicine at that University where, after retiring in 2006, she remains a Chair Emerita.

Seona Calder was born and raised in Scotland. After studying art, she went on to work as an illustrator on various projects, including books on science, astronomy and animal behaviour.

Seona claims that ‘living with a menagerie of animals over the years,’ has inspired her to use them as allegories for human behaviour brought to life through her illustrations.

Seona still lives in Glasgow and finds her inspiration from its culture and open spaces.

Caroline Logan is a writer of Young Adult Fantasy. Her debut novel, The Stone of Destiny, is the first in The Four Treasures series. She has since followed that up with The Cauldron of Life, The Sword of Light, and The Spear of Truth.

Caroline is a high school biology teacher who lives in the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland, with her fiancé. Before moving there, she lived and worked in Spain, Tenerife, Sri Lanka and other places in Scotland. She graduated from The University of Glasgow with a bachelor’s degree in Marine and Freshwater Biology. In her spare time she tries to ski and paddle board, though she is happiest with a good book and a cup of tea.

Isobel McDonald is Curator of Social History at Glasgow Museums. Having originally studied archaeology at Edinburgh University, she had expected to go into fieldwork, however a chance conversation with a friend about job opportunities at the British Museum has led to a long and varied career in museums and archives. She has specifically focused on the history of Glasgow for the last 18 years and is fascinated by the city’s rich past. In recent years she has worked on a wide range of exhibitions including the history of the Red Road flats, Georgian Glasgow and ‘GlaswegAsians’ – a community-led project examining the history and contribution of the South Asian population in Glasgow.

Corrina is a self-taught illustrator/author with a background in primary education. Having taught children from nursery to primary 7, Corrina has a wealth of knowledge with regards to engaging children in literature and knowing what makes a great story. It was this insight that encouraged her to start writing her own stories. Her books include The Girl Who Stole the Stars and The Boy Who Rescued a Rainbow (Little Door Books).

After spending several years writing, she finally explored the prospect of having one of her books illustrated. Unfortunately, finding a freelance illustrator proved challenging and expensive, so Corrina decided to have a go herself. Learning from her kitchen table via social media and online tutorials, Corrina taught herself the basic skills of graphic design and illustration. Eventually, after months of experimenting, she created her first fully illustrated picture book, The Girl who Stole the Stars.

Corrina continues to create and learn, now producing and selling her illustrated work online, while also developing other picture book ideas and stories.

Mark Mechan grew up in Broughty Ferry with his mum and dad, and is the youngest of four siblings — two sisters and a brother.

He went to Forthill Primary and Dundee High, then to Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in 1988 where he studied Drawing & Painting.

After a few years as a Medical Illustrator in Glasgow, Mark moved into publishing, and as a graphic designer and illustrator for Waverley Books, was part of the team that created the hit Maw Broon’s Cookbook and subsequent Broons and Oor Wullie titles in conjunction with DC Thomson.  Mark works as a freelance illustrator and designer as Red Axe Design, and after creating book covers for hundreds of titles over the years has now become author/illustrator himself, with his debut book Tumshie and its follow-up Welly Boot Soup. He now lives in Hamilton with his three children and wife Alison.

Anders Frang is a freelance illustrator from Denmark. He studied at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen as well as Edinburgh College of Art. He is currently based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

R. M. Murray is founding director and Head of Visual Art & Literature at An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis. He studied in Aberdeen and then at the Glasgow School of Art, where he was in a punk band with Peter Capaldi and Craig Ferguson. He subsequently returned to Lewis. 

His first novel, Bleak: The Mundane Comedy (Saraband), won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award.

Deborah Orr was an award-winning journalist, whose work regularly appeared in the GUARDIAN, the INDEPENDENT, THE SUNDAY TIMES and in many magazines including VOGUE, GRAZIA and MARIE CLAIRE. She was a contributing editor to ANOTHER MAGAZINE and was the first female editor of the GUARDIAN’s Weekend Magazine at the age of thirty. Deborah was a co-creator of ‘Enquirer’, a play commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland, performed in London, Glasgow and Belfast, broadcast by Radio 4 and shortlisted for new play of the year in the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland.

She died in 2019, and, in 2020, her memoir on her childhood, Motherwell, was published.

Catriona Child gained a degree in English from Aberdeen University before completing an MA in creative writing at Lancaster University. She won the Sunday Herald Blog competition and was shortlisted for the National Library of Scotland/The Scotsman Crime short story competition. Catriona has also been published in the magazine ‘Northwords Now’ and reached the longlist for the BBC radio short story broadcast.

Her first novel, Trackman (Luath Press) was published in 2012 and was described by The Herald as having “all the makings of a cult hit”. Her second novel Swim Until You Can’t See Land (Luath Press) was published in 2014 and charts the relationship between two women born sixty years apart – professional swimmer Hannah Wright and Marièle Downie, a wartime spy in occupied France. She has since published two more novels with Luath Press, Us vs the World in 2021 and Fade Into You in 2022.

She lives and writes in Edinburgh.

Born in Glasgow and now a dual UK/US citizen, T.F. Muir is the author of the DCI Andy Gilchrist series – the first of which, Eye For An Eye, won the Pitlochry Award for the best crime novel by an unpublished writer, and the second, Hand For A Hand, continues to garner great reviews. He is now working on his next Gilchrist novel, another story suffused with dark alleyways, cobbled streets and all things gruesome.

Leonie Charlton travelled extensively as a child, living in England, Africa, Wales and Scotland. She has worked as a cowgirl in Australia, an English teacher in Japan, and her degree in Hispanic Studies took her to Catalonia for two years. Marram, published by Sandstone Press, is her first full length book, although her fiction and poetry have appeared widely in magazines.

Anna Deacon has worked as a photographer for over a decade following a career in the music industry in London. Her photographic work has been published in The Times, The Scotsman, The Herald, Hood, The Big Issue, Refinery 29, Sunday Post and Outdoor Swimmer, and many others. She loves to photograph the great outdoors and enjoys portrait and documentary work. Anna has organised community swims, beach cleans, and fundraising for mental health charities within the swimming community.

Vicky Allan is an award-winning journalist and author. A staff writer for the Herald on Sunday, her work has also appeared in The Times, Daily Express, Vogue, GQ, the Guardian and Scotland on Sunday. She has won awards for her travel writing, features writing and for her articles campaigning against violence against women. Her novel Stray is currently being adapted as a feature film. She has always loved the outdoors and wild places.

Molly Aitken was born in Scotland in 1991 and brought up in Ireland. She studied Literature and Classics at Galway University and has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa. She was shortlisted for Writing Magazine’s fairy tale retelling prize in 2016 and has a story in the Irish Imbas 2017 Short Story Collection. Currently, she works as an editor and ghostwriter and lives in Sheffield. Her novels include The Island Child and Bright I Burn.

Olga Wojtas is an unconventional – and very witty – writer of postmodern crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. Her debut novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, has been published in the UK and US to great critical acclaim – being longlisted for the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize 2019, shortlisted for a CrimeFest Award, and named as one of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year by Kirkus.

A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has had numerous short stories and several novellas published. Olga’s second novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace, was published in 2020, followed in 2022 by Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters. The fourth book in the series, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Gondola of Doom was published in 2024.

She lives in Edinburgh, where she once attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, which appears in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the novel that inspired the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series.