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Douglas Thompson

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Contact: feedback@glasgowsurrealist.com
Local authority: East Dunbartonshire
Languages: English
Douglas Thompson's headshot

I was born in Glasgow in 1967, and graduated in Architecture from Glasgow School of Art in 1989. I won the Grolsch/Glasgow Herald Question Of Style Award in 1989, and came 2nd in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007. My first novel Ultrameta was nominated for a British Fantasy Award in 2010. I won the Faith/ Unbelief Poetry prize in 2016. My short stories, novels, and recently poetry, have been widely published, for instance in Chapman, Ambit, New Writing Scotland, various anthologies of science fiction, fantasy and slipstream.

I was a director and Chair of the Scottish Writers' Centre in Glasgow from 2011 to 2014, a judge of the Koestler Awards in 2013, of the British Fantasy Awards in 2014, and of the Scottish Poetry Slam Awards in 2015. My writing seeks to defy traditional genre boundaries, but includes elements of literary, science fiction, fantasy, horror and supernatural, thus is generally called 'slipstream'.

Usually my own starting point is simply the surreal, i.e. a fiction that seeks to acknowledge the central role of the subconscious mind (dreams and fears) as the powerhouse of all imaginative and creative thought.

Local authorities can visit

Aberdeen City; Aberdeenshire; Angus; Argyll and Bute; Clackmannanshire; Dumfries and Galloway; Dundee; East Ayrshire; East Dunbartonshire; East Lothian; East Renfrewshire; Edinburgh City; Falkirk; Fife; Glasgow City; Highland; Inverclyde; Midlothian; Moray; Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles); North Ayrshire; North Lanarkshire; Orkney Islands; Perth and Kinross; Renfrewshire; Scottish Borders; Shetland; South Ayrshire; South Lanarkshire; Stirling; West Dunbartonshire; West Lothian

Events can deliver

Performance; Reading; Talk

Topics of work

Activism & protest; Ageing; Biography & memoir; Childhood; Coasts, seas & oceans; Contemporary fiction; Death, grief & bereavement; Fairy tales, folklore & mythology; Fantasy; Historical fiction; Horror; Nature; Politics; Religion & beliefs; Science; Science fiction; Travel writing

Age groups published for

Teens; Adults

Age groups can work with

12-14; 15-18; 18+

Audience size

0-10; 11-30; 31-100; 100-500; 500+