Born in a small mining community near Edinburgh, Brian McCabe has been a freelance writer since 1980. He has had various residencies and fellowships, including the William Soutar Fellowship in Perth, and is currently Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University. He is the award-winning author of three collections of poetry, three short story collections and two novels, his most recent publications being Body Parts (Canongate, 1998), A Date with my Wife (Canongate, 2001), Selected Stories (Argyll, 2004) and Zero (Polygon, 2009).