Hamish Whyte was born in Giffnock, Renfrewshire, and worked as a librarian and bibliographer in Glasgow before moving to Edinburgh in 2004. For more than thirty-five years he has run Mariscat Press, publishing the poetry of Gael Turnbull, Edwin Morgan and many others, in well-presented pamphlet form. Mariscat won the Michael Marks Pamphlet Publisher of the Year Award, and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, both in 2015.
Whyte has edited anthologies of Scottish poetry, including Mungo’s Tongues: Glasgow poems 1630-1990 (1993) and Scottish Cats (2013), and several issues of New Writing Scotland. He has also published, edited and written on his friend Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s first National Poet. Whyte’s own poetry has appeared in various Scottish magazines, he has many pamphlets to his name and three full collections have been published by Shoestring Press. He is a member of Edinburgh’s Shore Poets.