Creative Conversations: Peter May

University of Glasgow
Creative Conversations College of Arts
Monday 09 November 2020, 1 p.m. – 2 p.m.
Free Zoom Event – Tickets at Eventbrite
You will be sent the link to join the meeting once you book.
Peter May is the multi award-winning author of the internationally best-selling Lewis Trilogy set in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland; the China Thrillers, featuring Beijing detective Li Yan and American forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell; the critically-acclaimed Enzo Files, featuring Scottish forensic scientist Enzo MacLeod, which is set in France; and several standalone books, including the multi award-winning Entry Island (January 2014, Quercus UK), Runaway (Quercus 2015) Coffin Road (Quercus 2016) I’ll Keep You Safe (riverrun 2018) and A Silent Death (riverrun 2020)
His most recent book is Lockdown: the crime thriller that predicted a world in quarantine (Quercus, 2020).
He has also had a successful career as a television writer, creator, and producer. One of Scotland’s most prolific television dramatists, he garnered more than 1000 credits in 15 years as scriptwriter and script editor on prime-time British television drama. He is the creator of three major television drama series and presided over two of the highest-rated serials in his homeland before quitting television to concentrate on his first love, writing novels.
Born and raised in Scotland he lives in France. After being turned down by all the major UK publishers, the first of the The Lewis Trilogy – The Blackhouse – was published in France as L’Ile des Chasseurs d’Oiseaux where it was hailed as “a masterpiece” by the French national newspaper L’Humanité. His novels have a large following in France. The trilogy has won several French literature awards, including one of the world’s largest adjudicated readers awards, the Prix Cezam.
The Blackhouse was published in English by the award-winning Quercus (a relatively young publishing house which did not exist when the book was first presented to British publishers). It went on to become an international best seller, and was shortlisted for both Barry Award and Macavity Award when it was published in the USA. The Blackhouse won the US Barry Award for Best Mystery Novel at Bouchercon in Albany NY, in 2013, Entry Island won the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2014 and the ITV Specsavers Crime Thriller Club Best Read of the Year 2014.
Creative Conversations is programmed by the University of Glasgow Creative Writing Programme and funded by the Ferguson Bequest. Professor Thomas Ferguson (1900-1977), Henry Mechan Chair of Public Health (1944-64), bequeathed his estate to the University, with the instruction that the money should be used to foster the social side of University life.
www.gla.ac.uk/events/creativeconversations
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