Literature Working Group
The Literature Working Group's Reportwas published on Friday 12 February 2010.
The Scottish Government welcomes any views on the report to - literatureworkinggroup@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Remit:
To recommend a new approach to public sector support of literature, focussing particularly on writing and publishing, and to report to the Minister for Culture and the Chair of Creative Scotland.
Scope:
The Group were asked to examine the provision both financial and non-financial for all areas of literature: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, journalism, children's books, and any other forms of writing that are published in book or journal/magazine form, whether in English, Scots or Gaelic (there may be some exceptions to this, among them oral literature); to address the needs of publishers and literary magazines; and of festivals, libraries, and all bodies working to promote literature.
Participants
The Literature Working Group will be led by Rosemary Goring, and includes Hugh Andrew, Valentina Bold, Matthew Fitt, Rody Gorman, Jen Hadfield, Allan Massie, Andrew Nicoll, Don Paterson and Timothy Wright.
Biographies -
Chair - Rosemary Goring
Rosemary Goring has a history degree from St Andrews University, and began her career as an editor with Chambers. She has edited and written for many reference books, including Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Chambers Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions, and the Larousse Dictionaries of Writers and Literary Characters. She was literary editor at Scotland on Sunday for several years, and editor of Life & Work magazine, before joining The Herald, where she is Group Literary Editor. Her most recent publication is Scotland: The Autobiography (Penguin, 2007).
Members -
Hugh Andrew
Hugh Andrew is the Managing Director of Birlinn Limited, an independent publishing house based in Edinburgh. Established in 1992 Birlinn Limited comprises a number of imprints; the Birlinn imprint publishes Scottish interest books, from biography to history, military history and Scottish Gaelic. The Polygon imprint publishes literary fiction and poetry, both classic and modern, from Scottish writers such as Robin Jenkins, George Mackay Brown, and the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith. Polygon was originally set up by pupils of Edinburgh University in the late 1960s.Mercat Press, founded in 1970, was acquired by Birlinn in 2007, and now forms an imprint publishing walking and climbing guides. Academic books about Scotland are also published, under the name John Donald. Birlinn is the largest publisher extant of Scottish interest material.
Valentina Bold
Valentina Bold was educated at the University of Edinburgh, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Glasgow. She was one of the first lecturers in the Dumfries campus, where she came in 1999 after working previously in the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen where she worked on studying and promoting the traditional culture of Northern Scotland. Before that, she worked at the University of Glasgow, in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies. Research interests include the literature and oral traditions of Scotland, particularly poetry, storytelling and song but also customs and beliefs. Dr Bold is also interested in cultural heritage, both in Scotland and in Scottish diaspora communities, such as those within Canada and the USA.
Rody Gorman
Originally from Ireland, born in Dublin in 1960, Rody Gorman now resides in the Isle of Skye. Gorman has worked as writing fellow at Sabhal Mor Ostaig in Skye, the University College Cork, been writer in residence at the University of Manitoba and is editor of An Guth, the annual Irish and Scottish Gaelic poetry anthology. He is currently Scottish Writing Fellow at PROGR in Berne, Switzerland. He has received writing bursaries from the Scottish Arts Council and An Chomhairle Ealaion, as well as from the Royal Literary Fund and the Society of Authors. He is Convenor of the Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee of Scottish PEN. He has published numerous poetry collections in English, Irish and Scottish Gaelic and translated works by numerous writers. His English translations include poems by Donald MacAulay, Sorley MacLean and Iain Crichton Smith. He has also translated Bob Dylan songs into Gaelic.
Matthew Fitt
Matthew Fitt is a novelist, poet and translator. He is co-founder of the successful Scots Language imprint for children and young people, Itchy Coo. Director of Scots Education Resources, he is also UK Secretary of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages.
Jen Hadfield
Poet Jen Hadfield was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary in 2002 enabling her to complete Almanacs, her first collection which was published in 2005 by Bloodaxe. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003 which she used to fund a year's residence in Canada. Hadfield gave readings across Canada, from Halifax to Vancouver and partly wrote Nigh-No-Place which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, she was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in Spring 2008 and won the high-status TS Eliot Prize. Presently based in Shetland, Hadfield has recently been awarded a bursary by the Scottish Arts Council to begin work on a novel.
Allan Massie
Allan Massie spent his childhood in Aberdeenshire before completing his education at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chevalier de'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He writes on a range of topics including politics, social questions, rugby union and cricket and is the Scotsman's chief fiction reviewer, a post he has held for 25 years. He is the author of almost 30 books, including 19 novels. He was awarded the Saltire Society's Scottish Book of the Year in 1986 for "A Question of Loyalties". He is also one of Scotland's most prolific and well-known journalists having written for a wide range of newspapers.
Andy Nicoll
Andrew Nicoll is a political reporter for the Scottish Sun working at the Scottish Parliament. He has worked in Scottish daily newspapers for nearly 30 years and wrote his debut novel "The Good Mayor" during his daily train journey to work. Just before a self-imposed 2 year deadline expired, he was offered a contract by the Edinburgh-based independent Black and White Publishing. "The Good Mayor" won the Saltire Award for First Book of the Year in 2008 and has now sold to 17 nations around the world.
Don Paterson
Don Paterson is a Scottish poet, writer and musician. Don Paterson teaches in the school of English at the University of St Andrews, and is poetry editor for the London publishers Picador. He has published five collections of poetry, two books of aphorism, and has edited a number of anthologies. He has been the recipient of a number of literary awards, including a Forward Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Award and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and he has been twice winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize. He lives in St Andrews, Fife. He was awarded an OBE in 2008, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Timothy Wright
Timothy Wright has been Chief Executive of Edinburgh University Press since 1998 having spent twelve years in a variety of sales and marketing roles with the Longman Publishing Group, formerly a division of Pearson PLC, owners of the Financial Times. He moved to Edinburgh in 1994 as Sales Director of Churchill Livingstone medical publishers - a division of the Longman Group - where he was responsible for worldwide sales for both the UK and the US Companies. Following the sale of Churchill Livingstone to Harcourt in 1998 he faced a choice of returning to corporate life or remaining in Scotland and taking on the challenge of running a small business - hence his decision to join Edinburgh University Press, a wholly owned subsidiary of Edinburgh University.
Timothy has served as Chairman of the Europe Working Party of the UK Publishers Association and from 2000 until 2003 was Chairman of the Scottish Publishers Association (now Publishing Scotland). A Board member of the Independent Publishers Guild he was Chairman from 2006 until 2008. He was elected to the Council of the UK Publishers Association in 2008 and is on the Board of their Academic and Professional Division.