W.N. Herbert

was born in Dundee in 1961, and educated there and at Oxford, where he did a BA in English Literature and then a D.Phil. His thesis was published as To Circumjack MacDiarmid (OUP, 1992). He mainly writes poetry in Scots and English, but a number of short stories have also been published.

He has held a series of residencies in Dumfries and Galloway and in Morayshire. He was Northern Arts Literary Fellow at the Universities of Newcastle and Durham (1994-96), Writer in Residence on Cumbria Arts in Education Skylines project (1997), and Writing Fellow for the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere (1998).

Since 1996 he has taught in the Department of Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

His books

Sharawaggi (written with Robert Crawford) Polygon, 1990

The Testament of the Reverend Thomas Dick, Arc, 1993

Forked Tongue, Bloodaxe, 1994

(PBS Recommendation, New Generation title, shortlisted for the Saltire and T.S. Eliot Prizes, won an SAC Book Award)

Cabaret McGonagall, Bloodaxe,1996

(Shortlisted for the Forward and McVitie Prizes, won an SAC and a Northern Arts Book Award)

The Laurelude, Bloodaxe, 1998

(PBS Recommendation, won an SAC Book Award)

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