Alan Bissett

Alan Bissett – currently disguising himself in the third person – is a novelist, playwright and performer from Scotland. He lives in Renfrewshire.
He was born in Falkirk in 1975. David Bowie’s Space Oddity, re-released, was at Number One in the charts that week. He grew up in Hallglen, a housing scheme on the outskirts of the town and the setting for much of his later work, attending Hallglen Primary School, Falkirk High School and Stirling University, where he received a First in English and Education. During the summers he worked as a labourer at the Grangemouth petro-chemical plant. After graduating he worked very briefly as an English teacher at Elgin Academy, before going back to Stirling University and achieving a Masters degree in English. He supported himself by working part-time in Waterstones bookshop and around that time was short- or longlisted for the national Macallan / Scotland on Sunday Short-Story Competition four times in a row (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002). He also published his debut novel about growing up in Falkirk.

This was Boyracers, released in August 2001 by Polygon when Alan was 25. He was offered a position lecturing in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds soon after, which is where he wrote The Incredible Adam Spark (Headline, 2005). In 2004 he moved to Glasgow to take up a teaching position on Glasgow University’s Creative Writing MLitt.

In 2007, Alan collaborated with the singer-songwriter Malcolm Middleton (Arab Strap) on the song “The Rebel On His Own Tonight”, for the Ballads of the Book album project, released by Chemikal Underground and conceived by Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble, which matched up Scottish writers with musicians. Alan left Glasgow University in December 2007 to become a full-time writer.