Shena mackay biography sample

PERSONAL: Surname rhymes with "reply"; born , squeeze Edinburgh, Scotland; married Robin Dark-brown (divorced); children: three daughters. Education: Attended Tonbridge Girls Grammar Primary and Kidbrooke Comprehensive School.

ADDRESSES: Home—15 Fortis Green Ave., London N2, England.

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Moyer Bell, Old North Rd, Town, RI

CAREER: Writer, –. Further worked as honorary visiting academician in writing, Middlesex University.

MEMBER:Royal Brotherhood of Literature.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fawcett conte prize for Redhill Rococo; Scots Arts Council Book Award, , for Dunedin; Booker Prize wee list, , for The Grove on Fire; Orange Prize fend for Fiction nomination, and Whitbread Honour shortlist for best novel, both , both for Heligoland.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Dust Outpouring on Eugene Schlumberger [and] Toddler on the Run (also mask below), Deutsch (London, England),

Music Upstairs, Deutsch (London, England),

Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger, Painter Books,

Toddler on the Run, Simon & Schuster (New Dynasty, NY),

Old Crow, J.

Think about, , McGraw (New York, NY), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

An Advent Calendar, J. Centre (London, England), , Moyer Clock radio (Wakefield, RI),

A Bowl pleasant Cherries, Harvester Press (Brighton, Sussex, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

Redhill Rococo, Heinemann (London, England),

Dunedin, Heinemann (London, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

The Orchard on Fire, Heinemann (London, England), , Moyer Seem (Wakefield, RI),

The Artist's Widow, J.

Cape (London, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

Heligoland, J. Cape (London, England),

SHORT STORIES

Babies in Rhinestones and Added Stories, Heinemann (London, England),

Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags, Heinemann (London, England), , Moyer Seem (Wakefield, RI),

The Laughing Academy, Heinemann (London, England),

The World's Smallest Unicorn: Stories, J.

Centre (London, England), , Moyer Warning (Wakefield, RI),

EDITOR

Such Devoted Sisters, Virago (London, England), , Moyer Bell (Wakefield, RI),

Friendship, Huntsman (London, England),

SIDELIGHTS: Scottish columnist Shena Mackay's novels about conventional life in Great Britain own acquire been praised for their eyeless humor and stylish prose.

Foster quote Brigid Brophy in Listener, Mackay's talent "is to stand the ruth back into unsympathetic rhymes…. Her novels are visions of universal anguish composed get going short, sharp reels." A Times Literary Supplement reviewer lauded Mackay for "extrapolating vividly-observed ordinariness smash into alarming and exuberant fantasy," topping feature of many of link novels and stories.

Publishers Weekly contributor Michele Field explained renounce "Mackay's signature is recognizable cause the collapse of book to book: a quick-wittedness of menace below the check-pattern of middle-class life; a intellectual eroticism charging everything … charge a very sharp definition sketch out time and place, of clamour names and domestic manners—altogether, significance if Harold Pinter were task force you through the contents blame his kitchen cupboards." The reviewer went on to cite Mackay for the "peculiar mix marketplace hilarity, surrealism and gloom mosey animate the commonplace world forfeit her books."

Mackay was born gather Edinburgh but moved south inherit England while she was yet a youngster.

She began penmanship when she was fifteen maturity old, and by the fit of twenty-seven she had reach the summit of five novels—without the benefit promote to a college education. Her pass with flying colours book, a collection of flash short novels, was published during the time that she was twenty. After much early promise, she took spruce long hiatus from writing among and Since then, however, she has released a significant thing of work, including a history, The Orchard on Fire, which was short-listed for the Agent Prize.

Mackay displays a dour gear on the world.

Many have a phobia about her characters live in dearth and are emotionally damaged owing to well. It is this untangle dreariness that appeals in honourableness author's work, however. A Publisher's Weekly reviewer noted, for matter, that Mackay "is a lyricist in spirit who happens fulfill write paragraphs about ordinary lives that turn out never be proof against be quite ordinary." In New Statesman and Society, Judy Journalist observed that "Mackay's keen discharge for dialogue is complemented afford the precision of her graphic writing.

She can evoke systematic mood or point up well-ordered meaning with one or cardinal carefully chosen images…. She has a great talent for drollery in the English tradition."

The darkly humorous An Advent Calendar, in lieu of instance, begins with a butcher's assistant who accidentally slices song his finger and grinds slap with meat that is succeeding sold to another unfortunate symbol.

The grim tone of integrity novel is heightened by say publicly fact that its events seize place during the Advent spell 1 leading up to Christmas. Strengthen A Bowl of Cherries grandeur central character reminisces about boss time when she was qualmish and her mother brought recipe a bowl of cherries—only nurture sit and eat them tumult herself.

"Mackay's writing—adroit, intelligent streak evocative—is a joy," declared Director Satterthwait in a New Dynasty Times Book Review appraisal slant A Bowl of Cherries. "Almost casually, she tosses off angels that are striking in their precision and their lyrical knot of the commonplace" and builds "a lovely book, entertaining, alert and, in the end, inwards satisfying."

Mackay's best-known title is The Orchard on Fire, a affecting tale of childhood in simple small village in Kent.

Eight-year-old April lives with her final parents, who have come get to the bottom of the village to run smashing tea shop. Despite her future friendship with red-haired Ruby Semanticist, April finds herself in perturbing circumstances when she becomes illustriousness object of unwanted attention free yourself of the wealthy Mr.

Greenidge. Expect the New York Times Volume Review, Roxana Robinson stated: "The novel satisfies on many levels. Ms. Mackay's characters are both convincing and wonderfully varied. She also demonstrates perfect pitch…. 'The Orchard on Fire' is representative intensely domestic novel, but that is not a limitation.

Greatness book's touching and somber show arises from much larger elements: love, loyalty, courage, sex, alarm and oppression. Ms. Mackay explores them all with clarity, civility and power." A Publishers Weekly correspondent commended The Orchard set Fire as "a finely disturbed and touching novel," animated unhelpful "the throb of real viability among blue-collar families."

Mackay has further published several short-story collections, leading notably Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags.

According to Katharine Wb in the New York Date Book Review, the collection "includes further evidence of Ms. Mackay's startling precocity, but it besides displays the more recent, smart work of a developed penman who has continued to graduate her distinctive voice over break off unusually broad range." The essayist continued: "There is perhaps span touch of Ms.

Mackay's English origins in her poetic essential melodic language. Her descriptive genuineness and imagination are matched exceed a talent to surprise."

In birth The Artists Widow, Mackay weaves together the story of Lyris, widow of successful artist Convenience Crane, and an assortment personal people who gather together production a showing of John Crane's last work before he monotonous.

Lyris, a painter herself, practical concerned about the loss take in her own creativity. Nathan, accumulate grandnephew, is a despicable allow boorish conceptual artist. Other system jotting include Clovis, a middle-aged proprietor, and Zoé, a beautiful countrified filmmaker who approaches Lyris anxiety doing a film about unnoticed women artists.

As the gifted and "wannabes" mix, Mackay "explores the issues of artistic cleverness, moral values and friendship," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Say publicly reviewer added, "She writes focal point language as quick and malignant as a snake's tongue." Ann H. Fisher, writing in Library Journal, commented that "Mackay … has written a wonderful, seize funny, and insightful novel."

In bunch up collection The World's Smallest Unicorn, Mackay presents eleven stories reflect on what a Publishers Weekly donator described as "life's odd pots." Her stories include tales memo a writer who visits unadulterated home for retired clowns, deft man who returns to Author to find a family filth is no longer familiar comicalness, and a woman who develops an unnatural fear of get-together the daughter of a comrade.

A Booklist contributor noted digress the author "has an gaze at for the small moment meticulous quirky detail, which helps delimit her characters," while in Publishers Weekly a critic commented focus the stories comprising The World's Smallest Unicorn "capture a state-owned range of voices, settings topmost styles within finely tuned tales bearing one commonality: their maximum surprise endings."

Mackay combines a stack of stories to the hint at the tale of Rowena Mug in Heligoland, which made magnanimity short list for the superior Whitbread Award.

Beginning with Rowena as a child in simple baby carriage, the stories move through the woman's life by the same token she is orphaned, ends upgrade in a boarding school, captain, as an adult, takes shuffle the role of housekeeper worry a place called Nautilus, promptly the home of a bizarre community. Now lived in jam two fading eccentrics, poet Francis Campion and Celeste Zylberstein, grandeur widow of a man snare letters, the architecturally unique igloo soon has another boarder instructions Gus Crabb, an antiques tradesman.

For the first time make a claim her life, Rowena seems breadth the verge of happiness owing to she instills a new hard to chew of vitality within the mangy domain of Nautilus. Writing creepy-crawly the Independent, Stevie Davies mat that while Mackay's book in your right mind "shaped as a myth exert a pull on renewal" it does not bore on a "narrative level." Regardless, Davies went on to signal your intention, Heligoland's "twin strengths lie enjoy its sensitive treatment of Rowena and in the lyricism go off at a tangent lifts the creaky plot spoil something bizarrely beautiful, a style which displays its own assumed manners, like literary enamelling." Guardian benefactor Peter Bradshaw commented of integrity book that "The writing remains superb, and of that humble, unworked-up kind that comes single from an author whose noble mastery of language is from head to toe beyond showy displays of technique." In the London Telegraph, Jane Shilling also praised Heligoland by reason of "a slender, intelligent fiction turgid in ravishing prose that combines richness with translucency, luminous passion for human strangeness with fleece anatomist's precision."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Best Sellers, March 1,

Booklist, Sept 15, , p.

; Sept 15, , p. ; Oct 15, , p. ; Nov 1, , Mary Ellen, consider of The World's Smallest Unicorn, p.

Books and Bookmen, Sept,

Guardian, March 1, , Prick Bradhsaw, review of Heligoland.

Illustrated Author News, July,

Independent (London, England), March 1, , Stevie Davies, review of Heligoland.

Library Journal, Sep 15, , p.

; Noble, , p. ; October 1, , p. ; September 1, , p. ; June 15, , p. ; June 15, , Ann H. Fisher, con of The Artist's Widow, proprietor.

Listener, June 15, ; July 8,

New Statesman, June 12, ; July 2, ; Oct 21, , p. 27; Feb 14, , p. 27; Noble 28, , p.

New Politician and Society, July 10, , p. 34; July 30, , Judy Cooke, review of The Laughing Academy, p.

Newsweek, Jan 17,

New York Times Retain Review, February 25, ; Jan 17, , p. 11; Dec 18, , p. 7; Nov 3, , p. 11; Dec 14, , p. 22; July 18, , p.

Observer Review, June 11,

Publishers Weekly, Sept 21, , p. 74; Lordly 16, , p. 86; Sedate 22, , p. 42; Sept 12, ; August 12, , review of The Orchard congregation Fire, p.

62; December 2, , Michele Field, "Shena Mackay: The Menace of the Domestic," p. 36; July 14, , p. 62; May 10, , review of The Artist's Widow, p. 53; September 4, , review of The World's Tiniest Unicorn, p.

Saturday Review, Amble 2,

Spectator, July 10,

Telegraph (London, England), February 2, , Jane Shilling, review of Heligoland.

Times Literary Supplement, June 15, ; July 2,

ONLINE

, (August 16, ), "Shena Mackay."