Alan MacGillivray is a retired teacher and lecturer, who has specialised in the teaching of Scottish literature, teaching English in schools from the Borders to Shetland, before lecturing at Jordanhill College of Education and Strathclyde University, Glasgow. He is a Past President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, and has written and edited books and articles on Scottish literature, before turning to poetry.  His recent poetry publications are the saga of fnc gull (which was selected for Best Scottish Poems 2009) and An Altitude Within (Kennedy & Boyd, 2010). He was winner of the McCash Scots Poetry Prize in 2005.