Mary McCabe

Mary McCabe is a novelist, poet and political activist who has written for adults, for children, prose, poetry, drama, long works, short works, fiction and fact. As a political activist (and a member of Scottish PEN) she tries to further all aspects of Scottish culture. She collects songs and sings them wherever she can find an audience.

Her grandmother came from Banffshire, she grew up in Glasgow, her partner is German and she took Higher Gaelic at night school. It is important to her to keep all our languages and dialects alive and she has published work in Doric, Glaswegian, English and Gaelic as well as in translation in German. Her themes vary but tend to concern ideas more than romantic love. Current themes are time, genealogy and evolution (after researching her own family tree) and politics (in the wake of the recent change of Scottish Government.

Her new novel, Two Closes and a Referendum, is an engaging tale of ordinary people in an extraordinary time. This novel brilliantly captures the growing excitement and fervour of the 2014 Independence Referendum that changed Scotland for ever, as ordinary citizens explored their identity and wrestled with the hopes and fears that surrounded the choice they were asked to make. 

​