Alison Irvine

Alison Irvine’s novel This Road is Red (Luath 2011) was based on interviews with residents of Glasgow’s Red Road Flats and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year Award. Her collaboration with photographer Chris Leslie and artist Mitch Miller, Nothing is Lost (Freight 2015), won the Scottish Design Awards Grand Prix. This was a Glasgow Life commission to record the impact of the 2014 Commonwealth Games on residents of Glasgow’s East End. She collaborates regularly with Leslie and Miller as Recollective and their practice involves documenting the stories and memories of people in relation to the places in which they live and work.  Most recently they have been Artists in Residence for Falkirk Townscape Heritage Initiative.

Her work in Recollective feeds nicely into her independent fiction projects and she is currently writing a novel based on interviews with dancers and residents of a sheltered housing complex in Lennoxtown.

Alison is a graduate of Glasgow University’s Creative Writing MLitt (distinction). She was awarded a Scottish Arts Council New Writer’s Award in 2007 and has been Scottish Book Trust Reader in Residence for East Dunbartonshire Library Service. She regularly works with libraries, schools, and community groups teaching creative writing.

Her second novel, CAT STEP, was published by Dead Ink in 2021.