Neil Davidson teaches sociology at the University of Strathclyde. He is the author of The Origins of Scottish Nationhood and Discovering the Scottish Revolution, for which he was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize and the Fletcher of Saltoun award. He has also co-edited and contributed to Alasdair MacIntyre’s Engagement with Marxism and Neoliberal Scotland. He is on the Editorial Board of International Socialism.
Lucy Ellmann was born in Evanston, Illinois, and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Sweet Desserts, won the 1988 Guardian Fiction Prize. She has also written Varying Degrees of Hopelessness, Man or Mango?, Dot in the Universe and Doctors & Nurses. Her most recent novel is Mimi, which is described as ‘a love story, a call to arms’.
Joseph Farrell was Professor of Italian at Strathclyde University. He has translated and written a number of books, including a biography of Dario Fo. His latest book is about Sicily.
Rosemary Goring is literary editor of the Herald and the Sunday Herald. She is the author of Scotland: The Autobiography, an anthology covering 2,000 years of Scottish history. Her first novel, After Flodden, will be published in the summer.
Alasdair Gray was born in Glasgow in 1934 and graduated in Mural Design, an abiding passion, from Glasgow Art School in 1957. Since then he has lived by writing fiction which has been published in many countries, by designing books (chiefly his own) and by painting. His latest book is Every Short Story, 1951-2012.
Mandy Haggith, who has been described as a ‘backwoods philosopher’, lives on a croft in Assynt. Originally from Northumberland, she spent a decade in artificial intelligence before leaving academe for a freelance career as a forest activist and writer. Her debut novel was The Last Bear. Her second novel, Bear Witness, will be published next month.
Christopher Harvie is a cultural historian. From 2007 to 2011 he was an SNP MSP, in which capacity he was described as “something of an oddity. For a start, he’s read book.” He has also written a number of books, including Broonland: The Last Days of Gordon Brown, A Floating Commonwealth and No Gods and Precious Few Heroes. Coming shortly is 1813 Year of Waverley: The Life and Times of Walter Scott.
Christian McEwen is a freelance writer, teacher and workshop leader. Her latest book is World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down (Bauhan Publishing, 2011). She has edited four anthologies, including Jo’s Girls: Tomboy Tales of High Adventure and The Alphabet of the Trees: A Guide to Nature Writing, and helped produce the video documentary, Tomboys! She is currently working on a play about women and money, Legal Tender: Women & the Secret Life of Money.
Harry McGrath is the online editor of the Scottish Review of Books. He is the former Coordinator of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and writes the only column in Canada regularly dedicated to Scottish affairs. He is a book reviewer for the Herald and Sunday Herald and a contributor to the Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, Bella Caledonia and numerous other media outlets.
Gerald Mangan is a poet, cartoonist, playwright and journalist. In the 1970s he was resident playwright at the Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh. He now writes and illustrates for the Times Literary Supplement and other journals. His collection, Waiting for the Storm, was published by Bloodaxe in 1990. This summer the Poetry Society in London is arranging an exhibition of his caricatures.
Brian Morton is a writer, broadcaster and journalist whose interests and expertise range from jazz to ornithology. In the past few years he has written books on Prince, Shostakovich and Edgar Allan Poe.
Alan Taylor writes for the Herald and Sunday Herald. He is the editor of the Scottish Review of Books.
David Torrance is a journalist, broadcaster and writer. His books include biographies of David Steel, Alex Salmond and George Younger. He is editor of a series of essays Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland?
and Great Scottish Speeches. He is also the author of ‘We in Scotland’: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate.
Jonathan Wright was educated at St Andrews and Oxford universities. He has written for numerous newspapers and journals and is the author of The Jesuits: Myths and Histories and Heretics: The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church.
