Author Lesley Glaister is a novelist, poet, playwright, and teacher of creating writing – but most of all a novelist. She’s the author of 16 novels, most recently Blasted Things, published by Sandstone Press.
In 1989, on an Arvon Foundation writing course, Lesley was discovered by Hilary Mantel. The novel she was working on, Honour Thy Father, was published the following year and went on to win both a Somerset Maugham and a Betty Trask Award. Since then, she’s published 15 further novels, several of which have been short- or long-listed for major prizes.
Lesley’s work refuses to be defined by genre though it contains elements of psychological thriller, historical fiction, and suspense. Often darkly funny, the novels are concerned most of all with voice, character and the resilience of the human spirit. Lesley has been described as the Queen of Domestic Gothic, and her work compared with that of Daphne du Maurier, Iris Murdoch, Joe Orton, Julie Myerson and other writers who care deeply about creating rounded, complex characters and whose work hovers on the boundary between darkness and light.
In addition to her novels Lesley has had several drama broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and her stage play, Bird Calls, premiered at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield in 2004. She has published two pamphlets of poetry, Visiting the Animal and Nub, both with Mariscat Press.
Lesley teaches creative writing in a wide variety of setting from Cretan tavernas to University campuses, most recently lecturing in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews. Lesley is available as a writing mentor through Gold Dust and for one-off private mentoring sessions by arrangement. Lesley lives in Edinburgh, with frequent sojourns to Orkney, along with her husband, Scottish writer Andrew Greig and Eddie, the cockapoo.
