Shena Mackay

Shena Mackay FRSL (born 1944), is a Scottish novelist born in Edinburgh. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1996 for The Orchard on Fire.

After the war her family moved to Hampstead, London, and eventually settled in Shoreham in Kent from where she attended Tonbridge Grammar School. Her writing career started with her winning a poetry competition in the Daily Mirror at the age of 16. After leaving school her first publication was a volume of two novellas, Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumburger/Toddler on the Run the following year.

She holds a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature and is also Honorary Visiting Professor at Middlesex University. In an interview with The Telegraph in 2004 Shena explained that she is synaesthetic and "sees words as colours", her own name is yellow.

She is the mother of painter Cecily Brown with art critic David Sylvester, and as of 2008 lives in Southampton. She is in favour of an independent Scotland.

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