Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963, and works as a writer, editor and musician. His poetry collections are Nil Nil, God's Gift to Women and The Eyes (Faber and Faber). He has also edited 101 Sonnets (Faber), a selected Robert Burns (Faber), and Last Words (with Jo Shapcott, Picador). He has been the recipient of several literary awards, among them the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards and The Geoffery Faber Memorial Award. He is currently poetry editor for Picador. He has also written drama for the stage and for radio, and has worked as a reviewer and columnist for several national newspapers; he currently reviews computer games for the Times. As a jazz guitarist, he works solo and with the ensemble Lammas, which he co-leads with the saxophonist Tim Garland, and with whom he has recorded five albums; he has also composed for the classical instrument. Having lived in London for many years, he now divides his time between there, Edinburgh and Kirriemuir. Don Paterson's latest collection of poetry, Landing Light, was published by Faber in September 2003 and has won the T S Eliot Prize 2003 and the Whitbread Poetry Award 2003.
Scottish poet and playwright Liz Lochhead was born in 1947, in Motherwell, Lanarkshire. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art and taught art at schools in Glasgow and Bristol. She was Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University (1986-7) and Writer in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. Her first collection of poems, Memo for Spring, was published in 1972 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Her poetry has been published in a number of collections including Penguin Modern Poets 4 (1995).
A performer as well as a poet, her revue Sugar and Spite was staged in 1978 with Marcella Evaristi. Liz Lochhead travelled to Canada in the same year, after being selected for a Scottish Writers Exchange Fellowship, and she became a full-time writer, performance poet and broadcaster.
Her plays include Blood and Ice, first performed at the Edinburgh Traverse in 1982; Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, first performed by Communicado Theatre Company at the 1987 Edinburgh festival; Dracula (1989); Cuba, a play for young people commissioned by the Royal National Theatre for the BT National Connections Scheme; and Perfect Days, a romantic comedy, first performed at the Edinburgh festival in 1998.
She translated and adapted Molire's Tartuffe into Scots, premiered at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum in 1987, and the script of her adaptation of Euripides' Medea for Theatre Babel in 2000 won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. In her play Miseryguts (2002), based on Molire's The Misanthrope, the action is updated to the modern-day Scottish Parliament. Her work for television includes Latin for a Dark Room, a short film, screened as part of the BBC Tartan Shorts season at the 1994 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and The Story of Frankenstein for Yorkshire Television.
Now in it's fourth year the WORD festival has become one of Scotland's most popular literary events. Word 04 will run from 14-16 May and hopes to attract a record-breaking audience of festival goers to literature focused events.Word 03 was the most successful festival to date attracting over 5,000 people to Aberdeen during the 3-day event. Audiences flocked to hear writers including Louis de Bernieres, Janice Galloway, Liz Lochhead and Michel Faber reading at diverse events including film screenings, storytelling workshops, readings, and a unique video link up event featuring UK and US poets laureate Billy Collins and Andrew Motion.
Issued by the Communications Office, External Affairs, University of Aberdeen, King's College, Aberdeen. Tel: 01224 272013 Contact: Emma Darling
- Issued by
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The Communications Team
Directorate of External Relations,
University of Aberdeen,
King's College,
Aberdeen
- Issued on
- 04 March 2004
