David Manderson

David Manderson was educated in Glasgow and St Andrews. In his early twenties he joined the Scottish folk band The Tannahill Weavers and worked as their roadie in Europe, Canada and the USA. From there he went into college teaching, where he set up and ran a student festival of short film, a creative writing magazine and a spoken word poetry event which ran for ten years at the Tchai Ovna Cafe in Glasgow's west end.

After an MLitt and a PhD in creative writing he published a novel, the first to emerge from postdoctoral studies in Scotland. 'Lost Bodies' (Kennedy and Boyd, 2011) won widespread acclaim. Two non-fiction books, both about films - 'Rob Roy' (2011) and 'Local Hero' (2012) - soon followed. A fourth book, the polemical 'The Glass Half Full: Moving Beyond Scottish Miserablism', co-authored with the award-winning director Eleanor Yule, was published by Edinburgh-based Luath Press in July 2014 to coincide with the Scottish referendum.

He won a New Writers' Award in 2001, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in Grez-sur-Loing in France in 2017, and a student British Television Award for the animated film of his poem, 'Expedition', in 2019.

In April 2023, David's ground-breaking work of non-fiction 'The Anti-hero's Journey: the Work and Life of Alan Sharp' was published by Peter Lang Publishers. It quickly won praise across Scotland and the USA and reviews in online publications such as 'Bella Caledonia', podcasts on the 'Scots Whae Hae' and America's 'The Projection Booth' websites, and extensive press coverage. It was launched online, under the title 'The Passion Project', by The Society of Authors in Scotland, at live events at Strathclyde University and the Scottish Writers Centre in Glasgow, and will be the centrepiece of a season of Alan Sharp films at the Glasgow Film Theatre in September 2023, to be hosted by David and the author Matthew Gear.

David's short stories, articles, book chapters and essays have appeared in many local and international magazines, journals, anthologies, on-line publications and prize-winning collections.

Review for 'Lost Bodies':

"David Manderson's "remarkable" debut novel, 'Lost Bodies' (Kennedy & Boyd) has a rare quality which takes it into two camps that critics usually keep apart - it's both a literary novel and a compelling page turner and well worth adding to your reading pile..." Bookrambler

Reviews for 'The anti-hero's Journey: the Work and Life of Alan Sharp':

'This labour of love is everything a critical biography should be: informative, gossipy, admiring and more than capable of restoring Sharp's reputation...' Carl MacDougall, writer and former president of Scottish PEN

''The Anti-hero's Journey' remedies a collective oversight by making a compelling and critically informed case for ... the singularity and international significance of Sharp's creative voice' Jonathan Murray, Senior Lecturer, Edinburgh college of Art

'Alan Sharp is one of my screenwriting heroes. '[It is] deeply gratifying to see his life celebrated and historicised' Howard Rodman, past president of Writers Guild of America West

'Remarkable...' Valentina Bold, Peter Lang series editor

'For the first time, [David] has made the progression of Sharp's career across multiple genres visible in a single piece of research, [identifying] themes, characters and motifs that followed Sharp even as he moved around the world adapting to other cultures and ... audiences' Eleanor Thom, writer, in 'Bella Caledonia', 2nd June 2023, https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/06/02/if-you-dont-go-away-you-cant-come-back-rediscovering-the-writing-of-alan-sharp/.

Contact:

Facebook: David Manderson

Twitter: @Mandraxian

Email: dmanderson@live.co.uk