John Aberdein was a herring in a former life, and was the first person not to kayak

round Scotland in 1974, when he discovered that SCOTLAND IS NOT AN ISLAND.

Early squibs in dense post-Doric were published in The Can-Can, Ken? (Clocktower,

1996) and in Ahead of its Time (Jonathan Cape, 1997). A recently completed novel

Messages is awaiting the joys of print.

Dorothy Alexander won the Maccallan short story competition in 2002.

A pamphlet of her poetry Spilt Colours was published in 2001, she is currently

working on a novel as part of her M Litt in creative writing. She lives in the Borders

with her husband and two children. 

Stuart Allardyce : Guitar player with the much missed Edinburgh combo Elephant

Noise, Stuart was famous for his rubber guitar strap and for the hammer he used on

his axe during live shows. Stuart now gigs with the Rosie Blue Jazz Trio, and jazz funk

outfit Superstrut He lives in Edinburgh with the prize-winning greynose and

jazz connoisseur, Carlyle. Expect guitar pyrotechnics and mind-bending sonic shapes.

Balmeddie Gibbons is probably best known for "scranning" a bowl of chowder

in front of an emaciated Todd McEwen in the oyster bar of the Grand Central Station,

New York.

Stephen Barnaby was raised by stoats and as a result was left able to communicate

only in grunting snuffly noises. Eventually he managed to translate these sounds

into identifiable English words brought to you now for your delectation.

Sheena Blackhall has published 37 collections of poems, two Scots novellas and

eight short story collections. She has won many prizes for writing and singing, most

notably the Hugh MacDiarmid Tassie (Scots Poetry), the Robert McLellan Tassie

(short story) and the Sloane Award for Scots Writing (jointly with Matthew Fitt).

More information is available at www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone/staff (under creative

writing fellow in Scots)

Gavin Bowd is from Galashiels, and is a lecturer in French at St. Andrews — founder

of the Stanza Poetry Festival and essayist on Scottish and European culture and politics

— correspondent for Al-Ahram — first translator of Michel Houellbecq — author of

short fiction and poetry, notably Technique (1999) and Camouflage (2001) — co-recipient

of Robert Louis Stevenson Award 2003.

Bridget Bradley has been the most delightful lass in Edinburgh for several years now.

It is no secret that she is the brains behind the major successes of the Bradley operation.

Hannah Bradley — Hannah's tender inner soul and feline agility have so far failed to persuade

Tony Blair that war with Iraq was morally wrong. Her debut solo album Driving Your Boyfriend Mad

will be released next year on Thirsty Records.

Sam Bradley moves with lightning swiftness upon most chocolate products. His superb impassiveness

is beautifully matched with his guitar and PS2 skills.

Seán Bradley is the implacable drinker behind Deliberately Thirsty, and Thirsty Books.

His ideas are arranged like the skins of an onion and peel away to reveal an inner core that makes

you cry. A tireless promoter of literature, Sean does not deserve to swing from the gibbet of

Literary Scotland's contempt, just because he wishes to give it to the public free of charge.

For several years now, Peter Burnett has performed the buffo repertoire coast to

coast with Seán Bradley of Thirsty Books. He is the author of The Machine Doctor (2001)

and the forthcoming Odium (2004).

Mick Burns was born in Belfast and now lives in East Lothian. He is reviving his interest

in playing the flute.

Angus Calder is a freelance writer living in Edinburgh. His previous work includes

history (Revolutionary Empire, The People's War); poetry (Dipa's Bowl, Colours of Grief)

and his miscellany of oddballs, tinks, heid-angers saints, keelies, nutters philosophers,

freaks and other personages, Gods, Mongrels and Demons.

Celtic Minded will feature contributions from Joe Bradley (lecturer in Sports Studies,

University of Stirling), James McMillan (composer), Willy Maley (Professor of English

at Glasgow University) and Eddie Toner (Celtic Supporters Association)

Alex Cluness' work has been published in Edinburgh Review, Deliberately Thirsty,

Northwords, The New Shetlander, Markings, Lallans, Poetry Scotland, New Writing

Scotland, Da Cross, One for Unst, Mindin Rhoda. His first collection

Shetland & Other Poems is published by The Shetland Times Ltd. Kettillonia publishes

his collection Disguise. He lives in Shetland.

Stewart Conn is Edinburgh's poet laureate. He left the BBC radio dept in 1992 to

work on his own writing, as a poet playwright, reviewer and essayist. His work

includes Stolen Light (1999) and Landscapes and Memories (2001). On a reading tour of

the Mid-West a few years back, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire compiled and

incorporated a website of Stewart Conn's poetry, which is illustrated with cyber magic

beyond the author's dreams, and allows browsers to hear the author read with only a

cursor-click. www.uwec.edu/English/Library/Conn

Andrew Crumey has a PhD in theoretical physics and is literary editor of Scotland on Sunday.

He was chosen for Granta's "Best young British novelists" but disqualified himself for being too

old. His fifth novel Mobius Dick has just been published by Picador. "Andrew Crumey is one

of my three or four favourite modern writers." Jonathan Coe. For more, examine

www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~crumey/scot

Ken Crump was born just outside of Seattle and started walking on a train at the age of one.

Picked up pen to paper as an easy credit option in college, only to find the addiction to writing is

for life. Has settled permanently in Edinburgh and finds the city a creative vanguard of art and

literature. Rebellion comes natural to the arts!

Simon Crump whose novel Twilight Time has just been published by Bloomsbury, was born

in Leicestershire, and studied philosophy at Sheffield University. He has published two

collections of short stories, My Elvis Blackout, and Monkey' s Birthday. He has lived

in Sheffield for the past 20,000 years.

The Dead Good Poets live and work (largely) in the North East of Scotland where they

perform regularly. Expect appearances from Gerard Rochford, Douglas W. Gray, Helena

Nelson, Marion McAskill, Eddie Gibbons and Olivia MacMahon.

Chris Dolan — Award winning writer and former Fringe First winner - writer of works

including Sabina, Poor Angels and Ascension Day. Regular reviewer with The Herald

and contributor to numerous radio programmes.

Colin Donati - Colin grew up in various parts of rural Scotland, from the south-west to

the north-east. A poet, songwriter and musician, he now lives in Edinburgh. He has

had many poems published in magazines and anthologies, and is currently working on

a complete Scots translation of Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment. Kettillonia publishes

his collection Rock is Water or A History of the Theories of Rain.

Bill Duncan's fiction, poetry and non-fiction have been widely published including the

short fiction collection The Smiling School for Calvinists (Bloomsbury) with The Wee Book

of Calvin : Air-Kissing in the North-East due to be published by Penguin in November.

He also works across a range of media in cross-artform collaborations with visual artists and

designers. The Hirta Portfolio is a suite of poems and etchings produced with Susan Wilson

at Dundee Contemporary Arts, and his current project http://www.thehaar.org/ is an ambitious and

ever expanding web-based environment with Andy Rice. He also produces obscure objects made

from driftwood and bone. He divides his time between Dundee, St. Madoes and Orkney.

Nicholas Fairweather — was born in Sussex in 1945 and was brought up in the South

of England by his Scottish parents. His love of the Scottish landscape was fostered

by childhood holiday spent in the Cairngorms where he climbed his first Monroe at the age

of 11. He now lives in Edinburgh with his wife and two children, working as a Guidance

Manager and finding some time to pursue his love of the hills, and his hatred of golf.

Brian Farrington was born in Dublin, and although he has lived in France, England and Scotland,

has never completely left it. He has published among other things Malachi Stilt Jack, a study

of W B Yeats (London, Connolly Publications, 1965) and The Emigrant of the Hundred

Townlands and Other Poems (Dublin, Dolmen, 1968). He is a retired academic and lives

in Aberdeen and Donegal.

Alison Flett is extremely houseproud and this is reflected in her poetry. A liberal use

of domestic cleaning products brings a strong flavour to her work whilst her choice of

toilet roll colour suggests the heavy influence of an avocado bathroom suite.

Eddie Gibbons. Winner of the "Britain in Bloom" contest for five years running, Eddie

is particularly proud of his Pinus Densiflora, which he has exhibited in many shop

doorways in Union Street, Aberdeen. His writing is flushed with rosy-cheeked rhymes

and sprinkled with dainty ornamentations that would grace any mantelpiece, tucked

in between the clock and the crucifix, just to the left of the pyramid of shrunken heads.

John Glenday's collection Undark, was a poetry Book Society recommendation in 1995.

His most recent work is a collaboration on an imaginative reconstruction of the life

Robert Burns did not have entitled Burns Out of the Box. He is featured at

www.laurahird.com/showcase/johnglenday

Douglas W. Gray was born and raised in Aberdeen. He has had many jobs but has yet

to find a career. He won the Feile Filiochta International Poetry Competition in 2001

and was runner up in the Scottish International Poetry Competition, 2003

Guests — No peeking — this is supposed to be a surprise!

Chris Harvie has since 1980 been Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University

of Tübingen; he also has honorary chairs at Aberystwyth and Strathclyde. His subsequent

publications include The Centre of Things (Unwin Hyman, 1991) on political fiction in Britain,

The Rise of Regional Europe (Routledge) and Fool's Gold; the Story of North Sea Oil

(Hamish Hamilton), both 1994. Travelling Scot, a collection of essays appeared from Argyll in

1999, The Road to Home Rule (with Peter Jones) from Edinburgh University Press in 2000,

Deep-Freid Hillman Imp: Scotland's Transport from Argyll in 2001 and Scotland, a Short History

(OUP 2002). A civic nationalist and greenish republican, Harvie's social beliefs owe much to

Marxism as modified by Gramsci, the sociology of Patrick Geddes and a continually nagging if

eclectic Christian socialism. The relevant Harvie website is http://www.intelligent-mr-toad.de/.

John Herdman was born in Edinburgh in 1941 and now lives in Blair Atholl, Perthshire.

Novelist, short story writer and critic, his most recent novels are Imelda (1993), Ghostwriting (1996)

and The Sinister Cabaret (2001). He has also written books of Bob Dylan and the theme of the

literary double. He has had two plays performed in the Fringe in past years.

More to be found at http://www.johnherdman.co.uk/

Brent Hodgson's work includes Hello Maister Smyth, Intoxication and Mr Burns for Supper.

Frequently compared to Ivor Cutler, his work is a surreal amalgamation of spaghetti hoops and

renaissance aureate poetry.

Jules Horne is a purveyor of words and sounds. Customers include BBC Scotland,

The Traverse Theatre, Scottish Borders Council and Helmut Kohl.

Tom Hubbard is the author or editor of several books and pamphlets. He was the

first librarian of the Scottish Poetry Library, subsequently taught at overseas universities,

and in recent years has been editor of BOSLIT, the online Bibliography of Scottish

Literature in Translation. Kettillonia publishes his collection Scottish Faust.

He lives in Fife.

Robert Alan Jamieson is a novelist, dramatist and poet based in Edinburgh. His most recent

theatre was the North Edinburgh community play, Oyster Wars.

To visit the Kettilonia website, Click Here

Stuart Kelly — Theophile Gauthier said a man should only become a critic when he was

absolutely sure in his own heart that he was not a poet; advice taken seriously by Stuart Kelly.

Stuart gave up poetry in 2000 to become a full time book reviewer for Scotland on Sunday

as well a cultural commentator in Poetry Review, Flak, and Product. His first book of

non-fiction, The Book of Lost Books, will be published in 2005 by Penguin,

Random House USA and a Turkish Publisher, Bilgi Yayenevi.

Peter Lamont is a practicing magician, a parapsychologist at the Koestler Institute

of Edinburgh University and a historian of the paranormal. His first book, The Rise of the

Indian Rope Trick, was published to huge acclaim in 2003.

Irene Leake is a sculptor with a doctorate in the drawing of dance. She was winner of

the inaugural Kirkpatrick Dobie Prize for poetry and the regional Ottakar's / Faber poetry

prize. Koo Press will be publishing a chapbook of her poems in the autumn.

Lunch with Blake are Sara Strati, Maureen Hunter and Robin Anderson.

Sara Strati is a storyteller, and sings and plays the flute. Maureen Hunter plays the clarsach

and sings. Robin Anderson sings and plays piano and guitar. All live in Edinburgh and

are collaborating to present Lunch with Blake. The performers met with the intention of

using William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience as inspiration for their music making.

The resulting mixture of pop, folk and jazz arrangements are a haunting and bittersweet

interpretation of Blake's finest songs.

M8 Mile : Edinburgh guitar duo who currently specialise in light renderings of gangsta

rap classics, including joints by that twisted photo-negative of a Civil Rights dream — Eminem.

Todd McEwen, the author of Who Sleeps with Katz was born in California and educated

at Columbia University in New York. He worked in broadcasting, theatre and the rare

book trade until, hoping to avoid "The Reagan Years", he moved to Scotland in 1980,

landing with some dismay in "The Thatcher Years". His previous novels are Fisher's Hornpipe,

a story of hope set, incongruously , in Boston; McX, a deeply pessimistic book about

the future of Perth; and Arithmetic, a heartwarming trip through animation and Communism.

Hannah McGill has been shortlisted twice for the Macallan Short Story Competition and

the Canongate new writing Prize. She is the film critic The Herald, writes in

Product magazine, and is working on her first novel.

Justin McLaren is the singer-songwriter

Olivia McMahon has lived for the last 35 years in Aberdeen. She is widely published as

a poet: a first collection of her poems, Cuchulain Out the Back is in preparation. Meanwhile

a chapbook will be published by Koo Press.

Elspeth Murray is a poet and performer living in Newhaven, Edinburgh. Her recent work

includes running a school-based poetry and percussion project towards a sound

installation in the CCA in Glasgow, writing love poetry to be texted from the Scottish

Poetry Library website on Valentine's day and working as Poet in Residence with

Great Circle, a PR agency, a project which won an Arts and Business Award.

Her work has been used in a triple award winning film Flip-Flotsam, three of the

pocketbooks anthologies, the journal of the Scottish Centre of Geopoetics and

can be enjoyed on her website http://www.elspethmurray.com/. Among other new

collaborations in 2004, she is working with theatre company Reeling and Writhing,

writing a theatre piece inspired by Mosaic, a poetic monologue inspired by

Anthony Minghella.

Helena Nelson lives in Fife, where she is menopausal and writes poems. Her hobby is work.

Richard Price is the author of several poetry collections, A Boy in Summer (linked short stories),

as well as a study of the Scottish novelist of the interwar years, Neil M. Gunn. His next

volume of poetry, Lucky Day, will be published by Carcanet in 2005. He performs his

work regularly and has worked collaboratively with the artists Ron King, David Annand,

Chan Ky-Yut and Karen Bleitz. He is head of Modern British Collections at the

British Library.

Colm Quinn — Man of mystery. Writes poetry. Writes fiction.

James Robertson is a poet, fiction writer and editor. He has published two collections of

short stories and a book of poetry, co-compiled a Dictionary of Scottish Quotations in 1996,

and has edited many books, including the Selected Poems of Robert Fergusson and works by

the 19^th Century geologist and folklorist Hugh Miller. He has written two novels, The Fanatic

(2000) and Joseph Knight (2003). The latter won both the Saltire and the Scottish Arts Council

Book of the Year Award. In 1999 he set up the pamphlet-publishing imprint Kettillonia, and

is general editor of the Scots language educational imprint Itchy Coo. Kettillonia publishes

his Stirling Sonnets, I Dream of Alfred Hitchcock, Fae the Flouers o Evil and The Day o

Judgement. He lives in Angus.

Robin Robertson is from the north-east of Scotland. His first volume of poetry

A Painted Field was published by Picador in 1997, and went on to win the Forward Prize

for best first collection, the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and the Saltire Society First

Book of the Year Award. His second collection Slow Air was published in 2002

and he is the only Scottish Poet in the Next Generation Poets List, published in 2004.

Gerard Rochford is widely published in magazines and has produced two chapbooks,

Love and Loss and Eating Eggs with Strangers. His most recent collection is Three Way Street

with Douglas Gray and Eddie Gibbons, and he is founder member of Aberdeen's

Dead Good Poets Society. He is a featured poet on Poets Against the War website.

He has lots of children and grandchildren.

Gibbons Update! Addendum to the Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Thirsty Lunch

Cabinet : At the end of the meeting all attendees linked hands and sung a rousing chorus of

Grey Coast Theatre has been producing new writing on the stage since 1992, from

a permanent base in Caithness on the North Coast. Founded and led by playwright

George Gunn, the company aims to bring cultural expression to the communities of the North

through drama, music and visual arts, reaching throughout the community via schools programmes,

community projects, professional touring and a founding role in the new Drama Department at

the Northern Highland College. The result is a resonating and uniquely regional body of work

that brings a fresh perspective to the Scottish stage.

Biggie Smalls,— also known as Notorious B.I.G. — Smalls, if you did not know, was a

big ill motherfucker from Brooklyn, and the greatest rapper that ever lived.

David Stenhouse is a writer and broadcaster, whose new book On the Make - How the

Scots Took Over London (Mainstream) was released to wide critical acclaim this year.

"Intelligent and sprightly … this book is wider, and more interesting than an exposé of alliances.

The chapters on fiction, anti-Scottish prejudice and the haphazard state of English

nationalism are all keenly observed and articulately argued." Scotland on Sunday

David Stenhouse's entertaining, informative volume expands on the truism that Scots

dominate the armed forces, the police, engineering, medicine, banking and media." Evening Standard.

Eric Swanepoel. Born in Edinburgh but reared in Africa, an Aberdonian for many years

but now resident in England, Eric is a vet and an English teacher with a doctorate in bat

research. He plays the fiddle badly and suffers from a grave case of Francophilia, the l

atter contracted while living in Paris where he wrote his novel Saving the World

and Being Happy, due out in August or September this year. He describes it as

a humourous love story interwoven with a serious political essay, inspired by

Machiaevelli and Cervantes.

Scarlett Thomas is the author of Bright Young Things, Going Out and PopCo. In 2001

she was named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the 20 best Young British writers;

in 2002 she was awarded writer of the year at Elle style awards. She is a vegan and has a

nice dog. Click here to leave Thirsty Lunch for a breather and visit her excellent, humble

website, http://www.bookgirl.org/.

Jim C. Wilson — Poet and memoirist, born in 40s in Edinburgh, Wilson studied English

Literature and Language. He has run weekly poetry in practice sessions at Edinburgh University

since 1994, and is the author of Cellos in Hell (Chapman) and Spellthorne Days, (Kettillonia)

Jack Withers — working class (electrician, labourer etc) Glaswegian, now poet-performer

and writer. "Most exciting and disturbing writer discovered" stated Stewart Conn, head

of BBC Scotland radio drama department. Novelist Todd McEwen also stated

that "if Bertolt Brecht and Cole Porter had married, Jack Withers would have been their kid."

Founder and poet-performer with Survivors' Poetry Scotland and yearly is invited to Germany

as communicator and entertainer. Shared in the James Kennaway Screenplay Award.

James W. Wood, not the famous critic but the infamous versifier, has published poems

in various places including Critical Quarterly, Chapman and the TLS. He reviews for

The London Magazine, Scotland on Sunday, Poetry Review and others. His first book,

88'20'N, is in editorial hell, prior to publication.

¨

By Sheena Blackhall

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