Originally from Glasgow, Pamela has been living and working as a freelance writer and editor in Orkney for many years. She is a widely published poet and non-fiction writer, and seven plays have been commissioned and performed in Orkney since 2006, when A Hamnavoe Man, about George Mackay Brown, was commissioned by the St Magnus International Festival and performed in his native Stromness. In 2019, her script about the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet in 1919, Beneath the Flow, was performed as part of the Scapa100 commemorations.
Poetry titles include Running with a Snow Leopard (Two Ravens Press); Orkney: a celebration of light and landscape, with photographer Iain Sarjeant, and A Crow in the Rear-View Mirror (Hansel Cooperative Press). Other poetry commissions include work in Archipelagos, published by the University of Edinburgh as part of the Writing the North project. Pamela has also had work published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines including New Writing Scotland, Slightly Foxed, These Islands We Sing (Polygon), Chapman, 100 Favourite Scottish Love Poems and Scotia Nova (both Luath).
In 2007, Pamela was the first George Mackay Brown Fellow in Orkney, the Scottish Poetry Library’s Poet Partner in 2008-09, and is part of the Scottish Book Trust’s Live Literature scheme. She directed the Orkney Writers’ Course for the St Magnus International Festival (with co-tutor Jen Hadfield) from 2011 until 2017.
Non-fiction books include biographical study Stanley Cursiter; a life of the artist (Orkney Museum), and St Magnus Festival; a celebration (The Orcadian), and many information books for children, published by Usborne, Collins, Kingfisher and Parragon. Pamela has also worked as Books Editor for The Orcadian, as a care worker, and as Arts Officer for Orkney Islands Council. She has been involved with the George Mackay Brown Fellowship from its beginning in 2006.
georgemackaybrownfellowship.com 