Shena Mackay
FRSL (born 1944) is a
Scottish novelist born in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
. She was shortlisted for the
Booker Prize for Fiction
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
in 1996 for ''
The Orchard on Fire'', and was shortlisted for the
Whitbread Prize
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...
and the
Orange Prize for Fiction in 2003 for ''
Heligoland
Heligoland (; german: Helgoland, ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , da, Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. A part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein since 1890, the islands were historically possessions ...
''.
Biography
Early years
Mackay was born in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
, Scotland, in 1944. After the Second World War, her family moved to
Hampstead,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, and eventually settled in
Shoreham,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, from where she attended
Tonbridge Grammar School
Tonbridge Grammar School is a state grammar school in Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom. The school was established in 1905 at the Technical Institute in Avebury Avenue Tonbridge, having only 19 enrolled students. Today, the school is situated in ...
. Her writing career started with her winning a poetry competition in the ''
Daily Mirror
The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print c ...
'' at the age of 16, while still at school. After leaving school, she began working in an office, before getting a job at an antique shop in
Chancery Lane
Chancery Lane is a one-way street situated in the ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. It has formed the western boundary of the City since 1994, having previously been divided between the City of Westminster and the London Boro ...
. The antique shop was owned by the parents of art critic
David Sylvester, with whom Mackay had her daughter Cecily.
Writing
Mackay's first publication, in 1964, was a volume of two novellas, ''Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumburger'' and ''Toddler on the Run''.
In 1965, she published her first novel, ''Music Upstairs'', set in London in the early 1960s.
She won the
Fawcett Society
The Fawcett Society is a membership charity in the United Kingdom which campaigns for women's rights. The organisation dates back to 1866, when Millicent Garrett Fawcett dedicated her life to the peaceful campaign for women's suffrage. Original ...
Fiction Prize in 1986 for her novel ''Redhill Rococo'' and the
Scottish Arts Council Book Award for her 1991 novel, ''
Dunedin
Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...
''.
Her novel ''
The Orchard on Fire'' was published in 1995 and was shortlisted for the
Booker Prize for Fiction
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
.
Characterised by ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...
'' as "finely wrought and touching", the novel is set in the 1950s and focuses on April, an eight-year-old girl from
Streatham who is forced to move to Kent when her parents decide to run a tearoom.
Mackay's 2003 novel, ''
Heligoland
Heligoland (; german: Helgoland, ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , da, Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. A part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein since 1890, the islands were historically possessions ...
'', was shortlisted for the
Whitbread Prize
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...
and the
Orange Prize for Fiction.
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''.
Early life and education
Bradshaw was educated at Haberdasher ...
commented on her "consistently beautiful writing" and a review in ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' called the novel "an exceptional performance".
Mackay has been described as "a skilled observer of the British class system and its discontents", receiving praise for her short stories as well as her novels. A review of her 2015 ''
Dancing on the Outskirts'' observed that she is "a master of subtle irony, and ... the comedy of unexpected juxtapositions and her skewering perception", while
Allan Massie
Allan Johnstone Massie (born 16 October 1938) is a Scottish journalist, columnist, sports writer and novelist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has lived in the Scottish Borders for the last 25 years, and now lives in Se ...
in ''
The Scotsman
''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its pare ...
'' said: "Shena Mackay writes wonderful short stories, wonderful in that they are full of wonder, and wonderful too in the everyday sense of the word. She has the knack of taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary. She is good on loneliness and pain, but also on the moments of beauty and kindness which shine a sudden light on desolate lives. This selection is the ripe harvested fruit of more than 30 years of writing short stories. There are half a dozen at least that a duller writer might have made a novel of. She is a comic writer, but one who might also say, 'And if I laugh at anything, / 'tis that I may not weep'."
Michèle Roberts noted: "Shena Mackay's work has glittered from the start. ...This new collection of short stories (some drawn from previous publications) showcases her genius for building comedy from terseness and compression. ...A triumph!"
Mackay was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature in 1999, and was also appointed Honorary Visiting Professor at
Middlesex University.
Personal life
In an interview with ''
The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
'' in 2004, Mackay explained that she is
synaesthetic and "sees words as colours", her own name being yellow.
She married Robin Brown in 1966 and they brought up her three daughters, Sarah Clark, Rebecca Smith and painter
Cecily Brown. Her daughter Cecily was not told that Sylvester was her father until she was an adult. Mackay and Brown later divorced and she moved back to London.
As of 2008, Mackay lives in
Southampton
Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...
.
She is in favour of an independent Scotland.
Works
Novels
*''Music Upstairs'' (1965)
*''Old Crow'' (1967)
*''An Advent Calendar'' (1971)
*''A Bowl of Cherries'' (1984)
*''Redhill Rococo'' (1986)
*''
Dunedin
Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...
'' (1992)
*''
The Orchard on Fire'' (1995)
*''
The Artist's Widow'' (1998)
*''
Heligoland
Heligoland (; german: Helgoland, ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , da, Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. A part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein since 1890, the islands were historically possessions ...
'' (2003)
Short story collections
*''Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumburger/Toddler on the Run'' (1964)
*''Babies in Rhinestones'' (1983)
*''Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags'' (1987)
*''The Laughing Academy'' (1993)
*''Collected Short Stories'' (1994)
*''The World's Smallest Unicorn'' (1999)
*''
The Atmospheric Railway'' (2008)
*''
Dancing on the Outskirts'' (2015)
As editor
*''Friendship: An Anthology'' (1997)
Awards and nominations
* 1987:
Fawcett Society
The Fawcett Society is a membership charity in the United Kingdom which campaigns for women's rights. The organisation dates back to 1866, when Millicent Garrett Fawcett dedicated her life to the peaceful campaign for women's suffrage. Original ...
Book Prize for ''Redhill Rococo''
* 1994:
Scottish Arts Council Book Award for ''
Dunedin
Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...
''
* 1996:
Booker Prize for Fiction
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
(shortlisted) for ''
The Orchard on Fire''
* 2003:
Orange Prize for Fiction (shortlisted) for ''
Heligoland
Heligoland (; german: Helgoland, ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , da, Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. A part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein since 1890, the islands were historically possessions ...
''
* 2003:
Whitbread Novel Award
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...
(shortlisted) for ''Heligoland''
Notes
References
*
External links
*
"Mackay, Shena 1944-" Encyclopedia.com.
*Ruth Thomas
"Shena Mackay Interview" Textualities, 2005.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackay, Shena
1944 births
20th-century Scottish novelists
20th-century Scottish women writers
21st-century Scottish novelists
21st-century Scottish women writers
21st-century Scottish writers
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Living people
People educated at Tonbridge Grammar School
People from Hampstead
People from Shoreham, Kent
Scottish women novelists
Women short story writers
Writers from London
Writers from Southampton