Carol McKay

Carol McKay writes fiction, poetry and life writing, and teaches creative writing through The Open University. In 2010 she won the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, and in 2012 her story Flags won the inaugural Booktown Writers’ Short Story Competition. Her fiction has appeared in Gutter, Southlight, Chapman, Mslexia and other magazines, and was published by PotHole Press as the ebook Ordinary Domestic: collected short stories in 2012. Her poems have featured in The Istanbul Review 4, Gutter 10, and as part of 26 Atlantic Crossings.

In 2012, she sourced and edited sixteen accounts from people around the world for the ground-breaking life-writing collection Second Chances: true stories of living with Addison's disease, published by PotHole Press. Addison's disease is a rare auto-immune condition and there's no market for such a book through traditional publishing. She's now convinced of the role and value of epublishing for niche markets such as this.

She reviews fiction for leading UK book organisation Booktrust as well as contributing to their Translated Fiction blog, and she reviews for the litmag Northwords Now. Carol's been a recipient of a writer's bursary and professional development funding from the Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland), and she's registered with the Scottish Book Trust's Live Literature scheme. Her website is http://carolmckay.co.uk