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Names
Literature

Alan Sharp

  • Person
  • 1934-2013

Born in Alyth, Sharp was adopted and raised in Greenock. Leaving school at 14 Sharp did a variety of jobs before moving to London with the intention of writing.

In 1965, his screenplay 'A Knight in Tarnished Armour' was broadcast by the BBC. He also published his first novel 'A Green Tree in Gedde', which won the Scottish Arts Council Award in 1967, the same year he published 'The Wind Shifts'.

Sharp emigrated to the USA where he found critical and popular success writing film screenplays, also moving into television in the 1980s and 1990s. His feature film projects included The Osterman Weekend (1982), Rob Roy (1995) and Dean Spanley (2008).
Sharp married four times and had a total of six children

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sharp

Anna MacDonald

  • Person
  • 1935-2022

Anna MacDonald was born in Dundee, the eldest of six children. She was educated at Rockwell Primary School and Rockwell Secondary School, then worked for a number of companies in Dundee, including Watson and Philip and Burndept-Vidor. Anna also worked at the University of Dundee, where she was the operator of the first word processer the University used.

A prolific and award winning poet, Anna MacDonald produced several collections of verse, and was also the author of booklets about old Dundee. Much of her poetry relates to Dundee and its culture. Her poem 'Oor Wullie' was widely used in conjunction with the Oor Wullie Bucket Trail in Dundee in 2016 and Oor Wullie's Big Bucket Trail in 2019, while her poem 'Adele Penguin' was been used to promote Maggie's Penguin Parade in Dundee in 2018. Her poetry has been used in schools and material produced by Verdant Works. Anna also translated the Japanese poem Furusato into English for the Nagano Winter Olympic Games in 1998.

Anna MacDonald was also recognised for her contributions to traditional music, and for many years performed as part of the 'Temperance Two Showband' with her second husband Clifford Inglis, who died in 2018. She was also the author of an unpublished autobiography which gives a frank account of her life and provides an invaluable insight into working class life in twentieth century Dundee. A year before his death, Cliff Ingles wrote his autobiography "I Belonged to Glasgow" which includes some of Anna's poems.

Anna died in 2022.

Examples of Anna MacDonald's poetry can be found at http://bygone.dundeecity.gov.uk/people/anna-macdonald
Cliff Inglis is featured on this podcast from the 2017 Dundee Literary Festival: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/literarydundeepodcast/episodes/2017-10-17T22_00_00-07_00

Natalie Russell

  • Person
  • fl 1990s-
Natalie Russell is a Lecture of Illustration and an Author / Illustrator of children’s picture books - her work has been published within the UK, USA, Japan, China, Korea and Thailand.
Natalie’s research focuses on the process of composing children’s narratives, with particular interest in the writing process and the influential factors that shape each story and resolve her animal character’s individual dilemmas. She believes it is important to get to know each character intimately through crafting the narrative over time. Actions, dialogue, settings, plots and themes are all explored in depth to assist in the decision making process and to lead Natalie’s uncertain journey to a more meaningful and sure-worded end.
Since the publication of her first book ‘Hamish the Highland Cow’ (Bloomsbury) in 2003, Natalie has published eight solo titles with leading international publishing houses including Bloomsbury Children’s Publishing and Macmillan Children’s Books, and recently collaborated with Kobi Yamada on ‘Because I had a Teacher’ for Compendium Inc. in Seattle, USA. In 2004 Natalie was shortlisted for the Scottish Booktrust Early Years Award (Best New Illustrator) with ‘Hamish the Highland Cow’ and was nominated for the The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal in 2009 with ‘Moon Rabbit’ (Macmillan). ‘Lost for Words’ (Macmillan) became runner up in the Scottish Children’s Book Awards in 2015 and was included in the Bookbug Family Pack that was gifted to every Primary 1 child in Scotland.
Natalie was mentor on the successful Picturehooks Mentoring Scheme (2012/13 & 2014/15) for emerging Scottish Illustrators and regularly attends literary events at learning institutions, libraries and book festivals to promote books, literacy skills and related image-making processes.
Source: https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/persons/natalie-russell accessed 5/5/2022