Pàdraig MacAoidh / Peter Mackay is a native Gaelic speaker from the Isle of Lewis. He is an academic, writer and broadcaster whose work is influenced by the diverse linguistic heritage of his birthplace. With an MA from Glasgow University and a PhD from Trinity College Dublin, Mackay has worked at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast; Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin; and at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, where he was writer in residence. He has also worked as a journalist and television news producer for the BBC.
He is the author of a monograph on the work of Sorley MacLean (RIISS, 2010), and has co-edited collections of essays on modern Irish and Scottish poetry and on Scottish Gaelic literature. He is currently working on a book on Wordsworth and Seamus Heaney, and has edited, with Ian S. MacPherson, An Leabhar Liath / The Light Blue Book, an anthology of Scottish Gaelic love and ‘transgressive’ poetry, published by Luath Press in 2016, and the winner of the Donald Meek Award.
His own poetry first appeared in a pamphlet, From Another Island (Clutag Press, 2010) and the collection Gu Leòr / Galore, published by Acair in 2015.
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