William Hershaw was born in 1957 in Newport on Tay. Both sides of the family had a coal-mining background, although his father joined the Fire Brigade. Hershaw is now Principal Teacher in English at Beath High School. The poem ’Cowdenbeath Man’, which featured on the Scottish Poetry Library's Poetry Map of Scotland, describes his upbringing in Cowdenbeath, and is unusual for this poet as he usually writes in Scots. It was the title poem of the collection published by Scottish Cultural Press in 1997. In 2003 he won the Callum Macdonald Memorial Prize for his pamphlet Winter Song, and in 2011first prize in the McCash Scots Poetry Competition.