Mandy Haggith
Mandy Haggith lives in Assynt in the northwest Highlands of Scotland, where she combines writing with sailing, environmental activism and teaching – she is a lecturer in literature and creative writing at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Her first novel, The Last Bear, won the Robin Jenkins Literary Award for environmental writing in 2009. Bear Witness was published in 2013 and Into the Forest followed shortly after.
The Lyre Dancers is her fifth novel and the third in the Stone Stories trilogy, which began with The Walrus Mutterer (2018), longlisted for the Highland Book Prize, and continued with The Amber Seeker (2019).
Mandy is also the author of three poetry collections, a non-fiction book and numerous essays, and the editor of a poetry anthology.
The Last Bear
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Set in early medieval Britain, when bloodthirsty Vikings raided and Christianity challenged and suppressed the indigenous pagan ways, this is a compelling and haunting story of power, transformation, love and loss and of the natural riches of a land still forested, treated with respect by those who lived on it. With evocative description of the beautiful northwestern Highland setting, The Last Bear centres around the extinction of the brown bear around one thousand years ago. It tells of a traditional community and its medicine woman, Brigid, who comes under attack personally and for her shamanic practices by ‘modernising’ forces especially a Christian minister who is hell-bent on converting Brigid and her kin to his own faith. From passion and loyalty to an epic struggle and betrayal, will we discover who killed the last bear?
Prizes and awards
Winner of the Robin Jenkins Literary Award in 2009