Duncan McLean (writer)

Duncan McLean (born 1964) is a Scottish novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

Life and works

Duncan McLean was born in Fraserburgh^[1] and has lived in Orkney since 1992. While based in Edinburgh in the 1980s, he started writing songs, stand-up routines, and plays for the Merry Mac Fun Co,^[1] a street theatre and comedy act with agitprop tendencies. The Merry Macs won various awards, and were twice nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award.^[2]

In the 1990s McLean was part of a loose grouping of writers centred on Edinburgh whose characters were mainly poor, working class and young, whose themes were drugs, drink, dance music, violence and alienation, and who took their inspiration variously from the Glaswegian writers of the previous generation, notably James Kelman, and from overseas writers like Richard Brautigan^[3] and Knut Hamsun.^[4] Among the so-called "Beats of Edinburgh", besides McLean, were Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Gordon Legge, along with the publisher Kevin Williamson.^[5]

In December 1990, with the writer James Meek, McLean set up and ran the Clocktower Press, a small but influential publishing house, which helped bring a new generation of Scottish writers to wider attention. McLean, Meek and the artist Eddie Farrell invested £50 each to print the first booklet, Safe/Lurch, with both writers contributing a story and Farrell illustrating the cover.^[6] After the first three booklets Meek moved to Kiev and McLean went on to publish seven more, including the first published extracts of what would later become Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. The fifth of the Clocktower series, it was printed in April 1992 in an edition of 300 under the title Past Tense: four stories from a novel.^[6][7]

In 1992, McLean published his first book, a collection of short stories called Bucket of Tongues,^[1] and since then has published several more books, including the acclaimed coming-of-age novel Blackden and a collection of plays, entitled Plays:One. In 1995 he published the novel Bunker Man and in 1998 his travelogue Lone Star Swing was published, which saw McLean tracing the roots of country music precursor Bob Wills.

In recent years, he has divided his time between writing, music, and selling wine. In 2006, he won the prestigious trade award, UK Restaurant Wine Supplier of the Year, and in 2007 founded the annual Orkney Fine Wine Festival, to date the only wine festival in Scotland.^[8]

Recent literary work includes a translation of Aalst, a Belgian play by Pol Heyvaert, which toured the UK and Australia for the National Theatre of Scotland in 2007.^[9] McLean leads a western swing band called the Lone Star Swing band, which in 2009 and 2010 toured Scotland and Ireland in a new McLean play, "Long Gone Lonesome." With a slightly different cast, the play toured five US states in 2012. Telling the story of the reclusive Shetland musician Thomas Fraser, the play was produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, and directed by Vicky Featherstone.^[10]

In June 2015, St Magnus Festival will stage his new play, "Telling the Truth Beautifully: The Trial of James Kirkness" - a story of gin smuggling and political change in 19th century Kirkwall. ^[11]

List of works

Short Stories

• 1992 Bucket of Tongues

Novels

• 1995 Blackden
• 2001 Bunker Man

Drama

• 1999 Plays 1: Julie Allardyce, Blackden, Rug Comes to Shuv, One Sure Thing, I'd Rather Go Blind

Non-fiction

• 1998 Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

Literary Awards

• 1993 Somerset Maugham award

References