Scotland

Adam O. Davis is the author of Index of Haunted Houses (Sarabande, 2020), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize. The recipient of the 2022 Poetry International Prize and the 2016 George Bogin Memorial...

Because James Thomson’s long, reflective landscape poem The Seasons (1730) commanded so much attention and affection for at least 100 years after he wrote it, his achievement has been identified with it. Thomson...

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, influential novelist, poet, and historian, and biographer Sir Walter Scott studied law as an apprentice to his father before his writing career flourished. At age 25, he published...

Thomas Carlyle was an extremely long-lived Victorian author. He was also highly controversial, variously regarded as sage and impious, a moral leader, a moral desperado, a radical, a conservative, a Christian...

Robert Louis Stevenson is best known as the author of the children’s classic Treasure Island (1882), and the adult horror story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Both of these novels have...

Alexander Wilson was born in Paisley, Scotland, and immigrated to the United States in 1794, after being charged and incarcerated for libel for a satirical poem he published indicting a local mill owner. Wilson...

Lesley Harrison was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. She has lived and worked in Istanbul, West Africa, Mongolia, and in Orkney, on Scotland’s northern coastline. Her poems have been published in Poetry Ireland...

Veronica Forrest-Thomson was raised in Glasgow, Scotland. She studied at Cambridge University and the University of Liverpool, where she wrote a doctoral thesis titled Poetry as Knowledge: The Use of Science...

George Sutherland (G.S.) Fraser was born in Glasgow, Scotland and earned his MA from the University of St. Andrews. He served in the British Army in World War II and taught for many years at the University...

Joseph Todd Gordon Macleod was born in Ealing, England to Scottish parents. He attended Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he became close friends with writer Graham Greene and passed the bar ...

William Miller was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Trained as a cabinetmaker, he began writing poetry as a young man. Miller placed many of his poems, written in Scots, in local newspapers and journals. Known as...

Scottish poet W.N. Herbert was born in Dundee and earned his BA and DPhil at Brasenose College, Oxford. His dissertation on Hugh MacDiarmid was published as the book To Circumjack MacDiarmid (1992). Herbert...

Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scottish poet, essayist, and novelist Muriel Spark (nee Camberg) was educated at James Gillespie’s High School for Girls and Heriot-Watt College. In 1937, she traveled to the ...

Scottish poet Alastair Reid was born in Whithorn, Galloway, Scotland, where his father was a minister. He attended the University of St. Andrews, though his education was interrupted by the outbreak of World...

Poet Ewart Alan Mackintosh was born in Brighton, England, but his father’s roots were in Scotland. The younger Mackintosh was educated at St. Paul’s School in London and Brighton College and studied classics...

George MacBeth was born in Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland. The son of a coal miner, he won a scholarship to study at New College, Oxford, where he earned a first in philosophy and classics. He went on to produce...

Ian Hamilton Finlay was born to Scottish parents in the Bahamas, where his father allegedly ran alcohol to the United States. Finlay was sent back to Scotland at the age of six and, at the start of World War...

Scottish poet, editor, and critic Douglas Dunn grew up in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire. After attending the Scottish School of Librarianship in Glasgow, Dunn landed a library job in Akron, Ohio. When he was drafted...

Poet and novelist John Burnside was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. He attended Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, where he studied English and European languages. A computer analyst and software...