Gillian K. Ferguson was born in Edinburgh. She gained an Honours degree in Philosophy from Edinburgh University, and then worked in various ways to support her poetry - as a jewellery-maker, artist, and Tutor in Arts at the Open University, before moving into journalism. She has been a columnist at The Scotsman, and also a regular contributor to Scotland on Sunday, The Herald, Financial Times, and contributed to John Peel’s Radio 4 programme, Home Truths.
Her first book of poems, Air for Sleeping Fish (Bloodaxe, 1997), was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book of the Year, and she was a prize-winner in The Daily Telegraph Arvon International Poetry Competition. Baby was published by Canongate in 2001. Ferguson received a Creative Scotland Award in 2002 to work on The Human Genome: Poems on the Book of Life and the resulting collection of poems is now available on the web.