Chris Dolan

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Chris Dolan
Born1957
Glasgow, Scotland
OccupationNovelist, poet and playwright
NationalityScottish

Chris Dolan (born 1957, Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish novelist, poet, and playwright. [1] He is married to Moira Dolan and they currently live in Glasgow with their children. [2] He is a lecturer in English Literature at Glasgow Caledonian University and is Programme Leader of the master's degree programme in Television Screenwriting there. [3]

Contents

Career

Dolan has published four novels (Ascension Day, Redlegs, Potter's Field and Aliyyah), two collections of short stories and two non-fiction books. He has had three full-length stage plays produced internationally, with five shorter pieces and four collaborations with Spanish dramatists. He has written over 50 hours of television, and more of radio drama. He has worked in collaboration with visual artists on several pieces of public art, has published poems, broadcasts regularly and writes for Scottish and London newspapers.

He also translates and adapts drama from Spanish, including Short Spin and Wheesht, and translates his own work into Spanish. [4]

Novels

"…Dolan's post-industrial and post-imperialist Glasgow: "[s]uch quiet, modest little groupings of streets, yet their shadow stretched and fell for thousands of miles, as afar as Africa, India, America." This long-range view gives the novel great power, as Dolan draws his characters inexorably together, in the lost, once-great, city on the Clyde." – Christopher Hart, Scottish Review of Books. [5]
"Good things come to those who wait, and this is a good thing… An engrossing and compelling novel... lingering richly in the memory… A fine novel" – The Scotsman . [6]

Short stories

Poor Angels (Polygon, 1995) was shortlisted for the Saltire Prize, and included both the winning story for 1995 Scotland on Sunday / Macallan Prize (Sleet and Snow), and runner-up the following year (Year of the Vezzas).

"He holds you in a tight grip right from the start and manages to combine a sense of raw nostalgia with a profoundly moving atmosphere of love and loss." – Scotland on Sunday [7] on Sleet and Snow.

Non-fiction titles

An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald (Birlinn 2009)

"Dolan's book is both personal and universal." – The Scotsman . [8]

Plays

His plays include The Veil (1991), Sabina (1998), The Reader (2000) and The Angel's Share (2000). [9]

Writing for screen and radio

Some of his work has appeared on the radio, including four original plays and many adaptations, including Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose , The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson and several of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels. His four-part modern take on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was broadcast in October 2012. [9]

He has written for BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio 3, and BBC Radio 4. He has written such screenplays as Poor Angels and Ring of Truth as well as TV drama documentaries such as An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald and Barbado'ed both broadcast by BBC and Red Oil for Channel 4. He also has written extensively for Taggart , Take the High Road , Machair (TV series) , and River City for which he has been writing since its inception. [9]

Awards

Bibliography and other works

Fiction

Novels

Short stories

Non-Fiction

Books

Plays

Radio drama

Television drama

Film

Television, DOC

Radio Writer/presenter Inc's

Poetry

Prizes

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References

  1. Chris Dolan profile at British Council Literature profile Archived 6 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine , Britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 20 February 2013
  2. | The Herald Scotland
  3. | The Conversation, Retrieved 2023-03-25
  4. | British Council, Retrieved 2023-3-25
  5. Scottish Review of Books website review of Redlegs, Scottishreviewofbooks.org. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
  6. Book review: Redlegs. The Scotsman, 14 July 2012 Redlegs, The Scotsman. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  7. Sleet and Snow Scotland on Sunday, "Scotland on Sunday - Scotsman.com". Archived from the original on 29 April 2013. Retrieved 7 July 2007.
  8. "An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald", The Scotsman. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  9. 1 2 3 Review Archived 6 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine , British Council Literature website. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Chris Dolan - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  11. "Home | Edinburgh Festival Fringe". The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society. Retrieved 11 January 2017.