James Jauncey

I was born in my grandparents' house in Perthshire but lived in Edinburgh till I was nine. By that time I'd been sent to boarding school, a large draughty house on the east coast of Scotland. Then the family moved out of Edinburgh and I spent my teenage years between the Perthshire countryside and boarding school near Oxford. I studied classics at school and then went to Aberdeen University to read law. After that I spent 20 years in London working as a journalist and publisher. But I always knew two things: that one day I would write novels and return to Scotland. In the end I did both in the same year, when I was 40. Some people move house and have babies. I moved back to Scotland and published my first novel, which is almost the same thing. Today I live with my wife and two of my four children in Birnam, across the river Tay from Dunkeld. In my work I run creative writing courses for people in business, helping them to see that it's all right to sound like normal human beings when they write. I'm also on the board of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It's the world's biggest literary festival and I always feel thrilled and privileged to be part of it. I do a lot of chairing, interviewing my favourite writers and other interesting people. In the past I've been chairman of the Society of Authors in Scotland and a member of the Literature Committee of the Scottish Arts Council. I've also been a judge of both the Scottish Childrens' Book Awards and the Pushkin Prizes. My other great passion has always been music. In the late 1970s I released a couple of singles that stayed well below the radar. More recently I ran a ceilidh/rocknroll band with my brother for 12 years. Today I play the piano in The Funky String Band, with fiddler Angus Grant and mandolinist Luke Plumb, both from Shooglenifty, and Australian singer/guitarist Peter Daffy. Although I write my books as James Jauncey, I'm known to everyone as Jamie. Image copyright to Marianne Mitchelson.