Robert Alan Jamieson

Robert Alan Jamieson is a Shetland-born writer, author of five novels and two collections of poetry, and has been a tutor of Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh since 2001. His most recent book, macCloud Falls, is a novel set in British Columbia, and was published by Luath Press in 2017.

Sara Bailey

Sara Bailey is an author, consultant and lecturer. She has worked with writers from Southampton to Shetland and various points in between. She is currently working on her second novel, The Incomer, and writing the Creative Writing Degree for UHI launching in 2018.

Non-Fiction: Writing the Horror Movie (Bloomsbury in 2013). Fiction: Dark Water (Nightingale 2016).

Sarah Jane Gibbon

Sarah Jane Gibbon is a lecturer at the UHI Archaeology Institute. Her interest in Orkney’s heritage began in childhood, as she was brought up in a family steeped in stories of Orkney’s folklore, history and culture. She is currently researching pilgrimage in the North Atlantic, particularly looking into the cult of St Magnus.

Gabrielle Barnby

Gabrielle Barnby moved with her family to Orkney in 2011. She writes in a variety of styles and enjoys being involved in local writing workshops and events. Her novel The Oystercatcher Girl and her collection The House with the Lilac Shutters and other stories are both published by ThunderPoint.

Amy Liptrot

Amy Liptrot grew up on a sheep farm in Sandwick. Her memoir, The Outrun (2016, Canongate), was a Sunday Times bestseller, Radio 4 Book of the Week, won the Wainwright Prize for nature and travel writing and the PEN Ackerely Prize for memoir, and is being translated into 12 languages.

Jane Harris

Jane Harris’s best-selling debut, The Observations, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and chosen by Richard and Judy as one of 100 Books of the Decade. Her novel, Gillespie & I, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards. Jane’s work is published in 20 territories. Sugar Money is her third novel.

Christine de Luca

Christine de Luca was born in Shetland and based in Edinburgh. She writes in English and Shetlandic, her mother tongue. She was Edinburgh’s Makar for 2014-2017. Besides children’s stories and a novel, she has had seven poetry collections and four bi-lingual volumes published (French, Italian, Icelandic and Norwegian) and participated in festivals in Canada, India, France, Norway and Iceland.

Morag MacInnes

Morag MacInnes is a writer and lecturer. She returned to Orkney to find it very different from the way she remembered it, and continues to be fascinated by the changes.

Simon W Hall

Simon W Hall is the author of The History of Orkney Literature, which was joint winner of the Saltire Prize for Scottish first book of the year in 2010, and has been translated into Japanese. He also writes poetry and fiction, some of which has been published recently by Abersee Press.

Harry Giles

Harry Josephine Giles is from Orkney and lives in Edinburgh. Their latest publication is the collection Tonguit from Freight Books, shortlisted for the 2016 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. They were the 2009 BBC Scotland slam champion, co-direct the live art platform ANATOMY, and have toured participatory theatre across Europe and Leith.

Jocelyn Rendall

Jocelyn Rendall, from Papay, is currently writing about the experiences of Orkney men in the Caribbean. Letters are, she says, like a magic window into the past, and it is the letters home from these Orcadians who went overseas to make a living in the 18th and 19th centuries that are the starting point for her current research.