Christine de Luca

Christine de Luca, née Pearson, is one of the foremost contemporary poets in Scotland. Her work has appeared in journals worldwide and she has read at many literary festivals, both in the UK and abroad. She grew up in Waas (Walls) in Shetland, the daughter of the headmaster of Happyhansel School, Sandy Pearson. After studying in Edinburgh, De Luca worked in education for many years. She now lives in Edinburgh.

In 1996 she won the Shetland Literary Prize with her first poetry collection 'Voes & Sounds'. In 1999 her second collection 'Wast Wi Da Valkyries' also won the Shetland prize. A third collection, 'Plain Song', was launched in Shetland and Edinburgh in 2002. It is accompanied by a CD of the poems read by the author. These three collections were published by The Shetland Library.

The pamphlet, Drops in Time's Ocean, published by Hansel Co-operative Press in 2004, is based on eight generations of De Luca's family, on her father's side which hails from Vidlin in Lunnasting. The Hansel Cooperative have also produced some of De Luca's stories for children on a CD, along with the work of John Cumming, Iris Sandison and Jane Moncrieff.

Her most recent collection, 'Parallel Worlds', was published by Luath Press, Edinburgh in 2005. One of the poems in this collection, Makkin Sooth Eshaness, won the Rhoda Butler Prize for Shetland Dialect, 2004. The Shetland Writing Prize is awarded annually for a particular genre of writing. In 2006 it was awarded for poetry. De Luca's poem 'Seein Baith Sides' won the overall prize and also the prize for best poem in Shetland Dialect.

De Luca's work has been translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Polish, Austrian-German, French, Italian, Welsh and even English.

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