News

Donald S Murray
writer & poet

Donald S Murray – writer & poet

Details: Created: 13 July 2022

“For the Safety of All” has earned a five-star review in the August 2022 issue of Scottish Field.

The non-fiction work published in July 2021 details the long and proud history of Scotland’s lighthouses.

The exploration stretches from the first ancient beacons to the lighthouse engineering legends, the Stevensons, the Northern Lighthouse Board, and wartime strife and automation.

The review comments: “For the Safety of All is a beautiful and insightful book that never feels dry considering the subject matter…”

Details: Created: 13 July 2022

Donald S Murray has charted a return visit to the Outer Hebrides in a new article he penned for The Guardian.

n Songs, stories and sea kayaking: a writer returns to the Outer Hebrides, Donald draws parallels between Howmore in South Uist and his upbringing in Ness on the Isle of Lewis.

He also, among other things, examines the role sea kayaking has played in the life of his son, Angus and how it has tied in with the literary traditions of the Hebrides.

https://www.theguardian.com/scotlands-stories/2022/jul/01/songs-stories-and-sea-kayaking-a-writer-returns-to-the-outer-hebrides

Details: Created: 09 June 2022

One of the few publications in Donald's oeuvre to have become out of print is now back on the shelves of bookshops.

Weaving Songs is now available in paperback for the first time. This well-received book was first published in hardback in November 2011.

Details: Created: 09 June 2022

Acclaimed writer Donald S Murray – who was brought up in South Dell in Lewis – found out on Thursday May 26 that he had not struck lucky and won the Highland Book Prize 2021 with his work, In a Veil of Mist.(Report from welovestornoway.com)

The winner was Jen Hadfield’s The Stone Age. The Highland Book Prize organizers said after the announcement: “Jen Hadfield’s beautiful collection explores landscape, neurodiversity, and different ways of seeing and being: every poem gives the reader a fresh perspective on the world.”

Speaking afterwards, Donald said: “Congrats to my friend Jen Hadfield who won the Highland Book Prize last night.

Details: Created: 17 May 2022

Donald S Murray is the featured guest in the latest Northern Bibliosphere podcast series ahead of the Highland Book Prize 2021 awards ceremony on May 26.

In the interview, shortlisted finalist Donald takes us back to the 1950s and Operation Cauldron, the biological warfare experiments off Lewis that inspired In a Veil of Mist.

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My latest books

Donald S. Murray was raised in the Ness district of the Isle of Lewis. He spent his teenage years at The Nicolson Institute secondary school in Stornoway - in those days, pupils from rural districts stayed in school hostels in the town rather than returning home each night – before studying at the University of Glasgow in the 1980s. After receiving an MA (Joint Hons) in English and Scottish Literature, he went on to gain a Diploma in Education and a Secondary Teaching Qualification.

Since then, Donald has written an ever-growing range of books and published a wide variety of essays, columns, short stories, and poems in the likes of The Herald, The Guardian, and The Island Review. His writing, both of fiction and non-fiction, has received widespread critical acclaim and appeared on shortlists and longlists for numerous literary awards.

His debut novel, As the Women Lay Dreaming, won the Paul Torday Memorial Prize in 2020, and was shortlisted for the The Herald Scottish Culture Awards Outstanding Literature Award and the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award in 2019.

In 2015, Sequamur, Donald’s first full-length Gaelic play, was performed throughout Scotland, including at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as in Belfast, London, and Ypres in Belgium. Described as 'moving, powerful, with a message that resonates today,' it examined the effect of the First World War on the The Nicolson Institute in Stornoway.

As a native Gaelic speaker, Donald’s voice can often be heard on BBC Radio nan Gaidheal, while on BBC Radio Four he has featured on Open Book with Mariella Frostrup. He has appeared on TV, on BBC Four’s Birds Britannia, a series looking at the different birds that live in the UK, and on The Last Seabird Summer, which examined the decline of seabirds in the North Atlantic.

Donald also regularly speaks at book festivals and conferences around the world, and has delivered talks at the University of Reykjavik in Iceland; the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland; the Nordic Centre in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands; the Blasket Centre in Dingle, Ireland; and the Pisa International Book Festival in Italy, among others. In 2020, he was elected as a committee member of the Society of Authors in Scotland, which protects the rights and interest of authors.

After 30 years as an English teacher, Donald became a full-time writer in 2012. He now lives and works in Shetland.

(Updated July 27, 2021)