 |
Aberdeen & Ayrshire
|
Sheila Templeton was
born in Aberdeen, then spent an itinerant childhood ranging from
Rannoch Moor to Dar-es-Salaam.
Though she left her grey granite roots forty years ago, her work still
often draws on that rich Buchan landscape. Since moving to Ayrshire
in December 2000, the changing light of the local coastline is an added
inspiration.
Her poems have been published in New Writing Scotland, Poetry
Scotland and The Herald. In Sept 2007 Sheila won the
prestigious McLellan Poetry Competition Trophy. |
 |
Ayrshire
|
Michael has spent all
of his life in Ayrshire, delivering milk (he was thirteen; bless
him), selling shoes and suits (doing a Del-boy), working in a call
centre (hated this), selling books (loved this), bank teller, financial
advisor, life coach and back to Banking.
He remembers writing his first book (ten pages in a school jotter)
aged eleven and forcing his pals to read it. Writing poetry sustained
him through his teenage years, but thankfully, he says, they all got
lost.
Life got in the way (too few women and too much drink – he calls
this period The Twenties) until a conversation at work reminded him
of his childhood dream – to write. Since then he has been widely published
in literary magazines and has had some poems included in the novels
of Margaret Thomson Davis. |
 (c)
Christopher Bowen
Critical Perspective
Alan Bissett’s writing deals in unlikely combinations: racy young
blokes in touch with their feminine sides, Scottish culture wedded
to Americana, socialism married to commercialised popular culture,
genre fiction matched with formal experimentation. These giddy and
dizzying alignments serve to refresh the comparatively traditional
working class Scottish masculinities of a James Kelman or an Irvine
Welsh. Not that Bissett himself would particularly appreciate such
a comparison. As he asks in a Guardian book blog in 2006:
why is it that all new writing, his own included, gets compared to Trainspotting?
© 2009 James Proctor and Conremporary Writers, British Council |
Falkirk and Glasgow
Website |
Alan
Bissett (born 1975) is an author and playwright from Hallglen, an
area of Falkirk. After the publication of his first two novels, Boyracers and The
Incredible Adam Spark, he became known for his different take
on Scots dialect writing, evolving a style specific to Falkirk, suffused
with popular culture references and Socialist politics.
After a short spell as a secondary school teacher, Bissett was awarded
a Masters degree in English from the University of Stirling. During
this time he edited a collection of Scottish Gothic stories, Damage
Land (2001), and wrote his first novel, Boyracers.
His third novel, Death of a Ladies' Man was published by
Hachette Scotland in July 2009.
Bissett used to lecture in creative writing at Bretton Hall College,
now part of the University of Leeds, and tutored the creative writing
MLitt at the University of Glasgow.
He became a full-time writer
in December 2007. In 2009 Bissett moved into playwriting: his
first play, The Ching Room, was performed at Oran Mor and
Traverse Theatre in March 2009. It
was followed by Times When I Bite, or The Moira
Monologues a 'one-woman
show' which Bissett has performed himself (at Glasgow literary festival
Aye Write in March 2009, at the Kikinda Short Story Festival in Serbia
in June 2009, and at Traverse Theatre in November. He performed
the Moira Monologues at Ayr's Bar Libertine in March 2010.
Please follow this LINK for
a podcast of the Moira Monologues at Bar Libertine.
Top
|
