Kirsty Gunn is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Dundee.   The award winning author of four novels, her latest book: '44 things: A Year of Writing Life at Home' was published on Mother's Day 2007. Her work has been translated into more than ten languages.  

Kirsty Gunn was born in New Zealand and educated at Queen Margaret College and Victoria University, Wellington, and at Oxford, where she completed an M.Phil. After moving to London she worked as a freelance journalist.

Her fiction includes the acclaimed 'Rain' (1994), for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; 'The Keepsake' (1997) and 'Featherstone' (2002). Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including 'The Junky's Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories' (1994) and 'The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood' (1997).

She is also author of 'This Place You Return To Is Home' (1999), a collection of short stories, and in 2001 she was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary.