Anne Donovan
ANNE DONOVAN’S new novel, Being Emily, will be published in May 2008 by Canongate.
Anne Donovan is the author of the novel Buddha Da and the short story
collection, Hieroglyphics, both published by Canongate.
Buddha Da was short-listed for the Orange Prize, the Whitbread First
Novel Award and the Scottish Book of the Year Award and was
nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It received a Scottish Arts Council Award and won Le Prince Maurice Award in Mauritius in 2004.
Anne Donovan won the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Award in
1997 and was a Canongate Prize winner in 2000. She has also written for radio, screen and stage.
Louise Welsh
LOUISE WELSH is the bestselling author of The Cutting Room and Tamburlaine Must Die. She was chosen as one of Britain’s Best First Novelists of 2002 by the Guardian, won The Crime Writers’ Association Creasey Dagger for the best first crime novel, and the Saltire First Book of The Year Award, 2002. Her new novel, The Bullet Trick was published in paperback in 2007.
Rodge Glass
RODGE GLASS was born in 1978 and is originally from Cheshire, though he has now been in Scotland since 1997, and since then most of his family have scattered all over the globe. Rodge is the product of an Orthodox Jewish Primary School, an 11+ All Boys Grammar School, a Co-Ed Private School, a Monk-sponsored Catholic College, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Strathclyde University and finally Glasgow University where he was tutored by James Kelman, Janice Galloway and Alasdair Gray, and began writing his first novel in 2002. This became No Fireworks, a book about Jewish identity which revolved around confused protagonist Abraham Stone, a disguised worst case scenario of the author’s own life if it all went horribly wrong – three times divorced, alcoholic and lacking in anything to believe in. The book was published by Faber & Faber in 2005 and was nominated for four awards, but won none of them.
Rodge’s second novel, Hope for Newborns, is a tragic comedy about two young people who have seen enough of the world to realise they want nothing to do with it in its current form. So they set up Hope for Newborns Plc, a fraudulent but successful internet charity. It is due for release, again with Faber & Faber, in June 2008.
From 2002-2005 Rodge spent three years as personal assistant to Alasdair Gray before embarking on an unorthodox, messy book on his life and work. Rodge has known Alasdair for a decade now and has filled many roles in that time – student, secretary, signature forger, driver, researcher, advisor, tea maker and paper boy – here he attempts one more. Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography is every bit as individual as its subject, and cheekily takes Boswell’s infamous portrait of Samuel Johnson as its template. Gray has co-operated with the project throughout but it is entirely independent – the subject has agreed not to read a word of the result until public release, and has promised not to sue once he has seen it. The book will be published by Bloomsbury in September 2008 and is currently being turned into a PhD, with added academic essays, extra footnotes, and minus the fart jokes.
