Andrew Greig

• Name — Andrew Greig • Born — 23 September 1951 • Occupation — * Poet • novelist • memoirist • Awards — Eric Gregory Award (1972) Scottish Book of the Year (2004) • Spouse — Lesley Glaister • Website — https: andrew-greig.weebly.com

Greig was born in Bannockburn, near Stirling, and grew up there and in Anstruther, Fife. He first wanted to be a singer-songwriter, travelling to London in search of a record deal and also supporting John Martyn whom he knew through one of his school teachers. While still a teenager, having already started writing poetry, he shared some of his writing with the poet Norman MacCaig and travelled from Fife to meet him in Edinburgh. MacCaig's influence on Greig's career would persist until his death in 1996 and beyond: I'd never call myself an intimate friend of MacCaig, but he was a role model, a mentor. I liked him, he really mattered to me, and as the years went on after his death, I increasingly missed him and thought about him. After school, Greig took various temporary jobs while also writing. He then studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1971, graduating with an MA in 1975. After university he worked for a short time in advertising before deciding to concentrate on writing poetry. Greig's writing led him to take up mountain climbing, but in 1987 he contracted ME/CFS, which brought that to an end. He continued writing during his illness and was recovered by 1997, but in 1999 he was afflicted by a colloid cyst, from which he almost died. Greig is a former Glasgow University Writing Fellow and Scottish Arts Council Scottish/Canadian Exchange Fellow. He lives in Orkney and Edinburgh and has been married to author Lesley Glaister since 2000.

Greig published his first book of poetry, White Boats, jointly with Catherine Czerkawska in 1973, while he was still a student. He had been awarded the Eric Gregory Award in the previous year. His next volume, Men on Ice, was published in 1977. That marked Greig's first reference to mountain climbing, although he had not then actually climbed a mountain. In 1985, Greig published an account of the successful ascent of the Muztagh Tower in the Himalayas. Summit Fever: The Story of an Armchair Climber was shortlisted for the 1996 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.

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* * * • (Published in some markets as The Clouds Above: A Novel of Love and War.) * * * *

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