Moira Burgess is a novelist, short story writer and literary historian, born in Campbeltown, Argyll, and now living in Glasgow.
Writing has been the most important part of her life since childhood and she has published two novels, The Day Before Tomorrow (1971, reprinted 2009) and Speak, Adam, originally published as A Rumour of Strangers (1987); the gap between them and the hiatus since are probably due as much to the fact that she can’t write fiction to order, as to other life events like marriage, two children (now adults) and single parenthood.
She has also produced short stories, two or three plays and a few poems, and many articles on a variety of topics.
For some years she worked mainly on non-fiction, publishing The Glasgow Novel: a bibliography (3rd edition 1999) and a book on the same topic, Imagine a City (1998).
Like most writers, she has spent a lot of time going round giving talks to writers’ groups and conferences, but more or less gave this up a few years ago because it was getting in the way of the actual writing.
She returned to fiction, which she much prefers, and has completed two dark Glasgow novellas and a novel set in the Western Isles.
Author of Mitchison’s Ghosts, a study of the supernatural and mythical elements in the work of Naomi Mitchison, she is now working on an edition of Mitchison’s collected prose.