Donald S Murray
Writer and poet Donald S Murray is an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature who has won the Society of Authorsβ Paul Torday Memorial Prize (2012, for As the Women Lay Dreaming,) and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award (2021), among many awards for his historical fiction, creative non-fiction and poems. His critically acclaimed books bring to life the culture and nature of the Scottish islands, and he appears regularly on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland and as a live performer.
Paul Torday Memorial Prize, WINNER TheΒ Herald Scottish Culture Awards, Outstanding Literature Award, SHORTLISTED Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, SHORTLISTED Walter Scott Prize, “Academy Recommends List” Highland Book Prize, LONGLISTED In the small hours of January 1st, 1919, the cruellest twist of fate changed at a stroke the lives of an entire community. Tormod Morrison was there that terrible night. He was on board HMY Iolaire when it smashed into rocks and sank, killing some 200 servicemen on the very last leg of their long journey home from war. For Tormod β a man unlike others, with artistry in his fingertips β the disaster would mark him indelibly. Two decades later, Alasdair and Rachel are sent to the windswept Isle of Lewis to live with Tormod in his traditional blackhouse home, a world away from the Glasgow of their earliest years. Their grandfather is kind, compassionate, but still deeply affected by the remarkable true story of the Iolaire shipwreck β by the selfless heroism and desperate tragedy he witnessed. A deeply moving novel about passion constrained, coping with loss and a changing world, As the Women Lay Dreaming explores how a single event can so dramatically impact communities, individuals and, indeed, our very souls.
Prizes and awards
Paul Torday Memorial Award, WINNER
The Herald Scottish Culture Awards, Outstanding Literature Award, SHORTLISTED
Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2019, SHORTLISTED
Historical Writers' Association Debut Crown, LONGLISTED
Highland Book Prize 2018, LONGLISTED
Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019, 'Academy Recommends List'
REVIEWS OF As the Women Lay Dreaming
βA haunting, poignant, meticulously researched novel about the 1919 Iolaire ferry disaster and its effect on the local community. An extraordinary piece of storytelling.β Authorsβ Club Best First Novel Award judges
βAtmospheric and evocativeβ¦ masterful writing.β The Wee Review
βA beautifully drawn novel. β¦Achingly well realised.β Roger Hutchinson, West Highland Free Press
βA poignant novel.β Nicola Sturgeon
βA searing poetic meditation on stoicism and loss.β Mariella Frostrup, BBC Radio 4 Open Book
βA powerful novelβ¦ A poignant exploration of love, loss and survivorβs guilt.β Nick Rennison, Sunday Times
βTriumphantβ¦ The writing is breath-taking, poignant and takes great pains to immerse the reader in ideas of trauma, suffering and the shared culture of a grieving generation. [A] rich and lyrical writing style.β Lochaber Life, Book of the Month
βTimely, clever, evocativeβ¦ Murray has said that this novel took him around sixteen years to complete and on the strength of this poignant offering one hopes we will not have to wait so long for his second.β Shetland Times
βA classic bildungsromanβ¦ It is that rarity: a work of imagination which reads like experienced truth. Itβs the kind of book you want to read again as soon as you finish it, because you know there is so much that will be revealed on that second reading: the kind of novel which can enrich your life.β Allan Massie, Scotsman, Scottish Books of the Year, 2018
βMurray is an evocative painter of landscapes and a deeply sympathetic writerβ¦ This diligently researched book exists principally as a space for forgotten voices to sound, bearing witness not just to this tragedy, but to the terrible cost of World War I itself.β Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail
βBeautifully and sensitively told, by one of the great lyrical writers of our time, D S Murray ... [A] brutal reminder of how resilient and tangled are the tentacles of tragedy.β Cathy MacDonald
β[A] tightly structured, time-hopping memoir-but-not-a-memoirβ¦ A story spanning 74 years whittled meticulously into shapeβ¦ Murray pulls off the perfect combination of fact and fictionβ¦ [His] assured journey through the disruption, trauma, love and loss threaded unspoken through one Lewis family, with barely a word of the shipwreck, is on every page a novel of the Iolaire disaster.β Catriona Black, Herald and National
βA very special bookβ¦ a poignant tale of family, love and relationships lived out in the hardest of placesβ¦ Donald S Murray is superb in bringing his characters to life and making the incidents they encounter feel utterly real.β Undiscovered Scotland
βA powerful bookβ¦which reveals new layers with every reading. It is history brought to life through fiction, and when it is done in a manner as moving and beautiful as this it is invaluable.β Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae.
