Laura T Fyfe
Lapsed parachutist Laura Fyfe suffers from a chronic low boredom threshold. She teaches out of compulsion, writes stories for fun, novels for the challenge, and poems because she can’t not. She supports other writers by mentoring, editing and by facilitating writing workshops and communities across Scotland and online. Her work has been published in Butcher’s Dog, Postbox and Northwords Now and was shortlisted for the 2022 Bridport Prize. Her pamphlet The Truth Lies is available from Red Squirrel Press. Laura’s non-fiction books Wellspring and Magpie Mind help writers and artists defeat procrastination and live more creative lives. She lives in river deep, mountain high Stirlingshire, and is the Stirling Makar.
Laura has dedicated the last twenty years of her life to supporting the development of writers. Firstly as a teacher in Secondary schools, then, since 2011 as a writing tutor, facilitating workshops across Scotland and online on a plethora of topics. Since that time, she has supported and established a number of writing groups, organisations and events around Stirling. She has collaborated with organisations across Stirling on workshops provision and poetry commissions.
From 2013 to 2015, she studied her MLitt in Creative Writing, completing her dissertation while balancing the care of her newborn son.
During her time as Director of the Scottish Writers’ Centre, Laura designed, edited and published the SWC Scotland chapbook series, celebrating five aspects of Scotland.
During the pandemic, she filmed 100 live workshops online to support writers around the world: Figment Creativity
In 2021, Laura became the fourth Stirling Makar and went straight to work, revitalising the poetry community of Stirling. This was initiated online during lockdown with competitions, readings, workshops and events. Then live and in person, Laura established Forth Fridays, visiting schools and groups and working with creative organisations. One such collaboration, the Stirling Bid for City of Culture, resulted in Kin Kennings (the collective poem she stitched together from the things Stirling’s people love about their home area), excerpts from which were projected up onto the Wallace Monument.
