Profile: Clio Gray

About This Author

Clio was born in Yorkshire, but has been resident in the Highlands of Scotland for over twenty years. Her books include the Stroop series, published by Headline, the first of which, Guardians of the Key, won the Harry Bowling Prize. She has had numerous awards for her short stories, including the Scotsman/Orange Prize in 2006, and a great many of these stories are gathered together in the collection Types of Everlasting Rest. ‘The great love of my life is books,’ Clio says, and she has been a vocational librarian all her working life, apart from a brief foray into nature wardening in the wonderfully named Tong Cockersdale just outside of Leeds. At present she works part-time in Tain Public Library in Easter Ross, where she has been since 2000, and previously worked on the Mobile Libraries in the Highland area. A passionate advocate of new and innovative writing, Clio was Chair of the Board of Trustees for Moniack Mhor Writing Centre for two years, and was also on the inaugural committee of Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s First International Crime Writing Festival, which took place in September 2012 and is set to go on to be one of Scotland’s most popular annual literary events. She is also the founder of HISSAC, the Highlands and Islands Short Story Association, which runs an annual open short story competition. As chair of the judging committee Clio reads upwards of 400 of these entries every year, and therefore is very well placed to carry out her mentoring duties for HISSAC, giving one-to-one advice to upcoming writers on how to bring their work to competition and publication standard. As well as her novel writing, Clio also has a section on her website to which she contributes small essays on the quirks and oddities of history, and these can be accessed also by Twitter and Facebook. Alongside all the above, Clio has three inseparable companions in the shape of her dogs, and any spare time is taken up walking them down by the sea or over hill and moor and dale… For more information on Clio, and to find out details and read or listen to extracts from her work, please visit her website. www.cliogray.com www.hissac.co.uk