Ewan Morrison

Ewan Morrison (born 1968) is a Scottish author, cultural critic, director, and screenwriter. He has published eight novels and a collection of short stories, as of 2021. His novel Nina X won the Saltire Society Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year 2019. Irvine Welsh described Morrison as "the eminent fiction writer of our times" [ 1]

Morrison was born in Wick, Caithness, Scotland in 1968.[ 2] [ 3] His parents are singer Edna Morrison and the poet, painter, and librarian David Morrison.[ 4] [ 5] His father was a "literary figure of national significance"[ 4] but was also an alcoholic.[ 6] [ 7] In interviews and essays, Morrison has talked about his unorthodox childhood in Caithness as a "hippie experiment".[ 8]

Morrison attended Pulteneytown Academy and Wick High School.[ 9] He was bullied by other children because he grew up as a cultural outsider and had a stutter.[ 10] [ 7]

As a teenager, Morrison enjoyed making figures from modeling clay and decided to attend art school.[ 7] He attended Glasgow School of Art where he experimented with portrait painting and photography under Thomas Joshua Cooper before discovering documentary film making.[ 3] [ 7] He graduated in 1990 with a first-class degree in art documentaries and also won the dissertation prize.[ 7] [ 3]

Morrison has been a member of several organisations he later described as cults, the Socialist Workers Party, an organisation related to Tvind, and a New Age group.[ 11]

Morrison worked as a television and film writer and director from 1990 to 2004.[ 12] In 1992, he wrote scripts in Angers, France for three months after winning the Pepinières Scholarship Pour Jeunes Artistes Européens.[ 13] The Scottish Arts Council gave Morrison a Media Artists Award in 1994, allowing him to develop and direct several short films.[ 13]

In 2000, Morrison was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Director (Television) and Best TV Production for I Saw You.[ 14] I Saw You won the Royal Television Society Programme Awards for Best Regional Drama in 2001.[ 15] [ 16]

From 2003 to 2005, Morrison was a resident scriptwriter at Madstone Films in New York.[ 12] [ 6] However, after two years of work, his film project fell apart.[ 7] His first feature film screenplay, Swung (2007), was an adaptation of his novel.[ 17] Morrison was also a scriptwriter for Cold Call and Netflix's Outlaw King.[ 18]

Morrison regularly writes as a cultural commentator for newspapers, including The Guardian,[ 19] [ 20] The Scotsman,[ 21] The Telegraph,[ 22] and The Times.[ 23] He is also a contributor to magazines such as Bella Caledonia,[ 24] The Psychologist,[ 25] Psychology Today,[ 26] Quillette,[ 27] and the literary journal 3:AM Magazine[ 28] .

At the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2011, Morrison gave a talk where he predicted the end of print books in 25 years; a related article followed this in The Guardian.[ 29] He wrote that it will be impossible for authors to continue to make a living writing books due to changes in sales models and the decline of advances from publishers.[ 29] He has also written about the role of fan fiction in publishing and what he had dubbed the "self-epublishing bubble".[ 30] [ 31]

Morrison was originally a supporter of Scottish independence; however, he later publicly stated that he had changed his mind and voted for remaining in the United Kingdom.[ 32] [ 33] [ 34]

Morrison says he uses writing to unravel the utopian/apocalyptic mindset that he was brought up with.[ 35] In 2016, he gave a TEDx Talk on the history and consequences of utopian projects.[ 35] He has also written articles about collectives and utopian projects.[ 36] [ 37] His writings on this topic range from "top 10 books about communes" to an article about cults for Psychology Today.[ 38] [ 39]

In a September 2014 article in The Guardian, Morrison said that young adult dystopian fiction serves as propaganda for "right-wing libertarianism".[ 40] This piece "sent shockwaves through sci-fi fandom",[ 41] resulting in responses from other writers and scholars.[ 42] [ 43]

In 2005, Morrison received the Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary, a cash award that allows unpublished writers to devote time to writing.[ 12] [ 44] Published a year later in 2006, Morrison's first book, The Last Book You Read and Other Stories, is a short story collection that explores relationships in the era of globalisation. The Times said it was "the most compelling Scottish literary debut since Trainspotting".[ 45] The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature says, "Undeniably Morrison’s collection of short stories makes a contribution to contemporary world literature".[ 46] However, Arena magazine responded by calling Morrison a "Scottish purveyor erudite filth".[ 7] One of the stories from the collection was made into the short film None of the Above.[ 47]

In 2006, Morrison received the UNESCO/Edinburgh City of Literature residency at Varuna, The Writer's House in Australia.[ 12] That same year, he was a finalist for the 2006 Arena Magazine Man of the Year Literature Prize.[ 12] New Statesman named Morrison to its list of "five young writers to watch" in March 2007.[ 48]

Morrison's first novel, Swung (2007) was about a Glasgow yuppie couple who work for a television company and get involved with the swinging scene.[ 49] [ 50] [ 12] The novel was adapted into a film in 2015, with Morrison writing the screenplay.[ 51] Distance was Morrison's second novel. It explored phone sex, parenthood, and two people involved in a long-distance relationship.[ 50] [ 7] The Telegraph said, "[Morrison’s] narrative voice is completely original. His prose feels utterly contemporary, with a smooth, readable texture."[ 50] The Times called it "utterly compelling...Morrison is one of the finest novelists around".[ 52] However, other reviewers found the book depressing; Jonathan Cape of The Scotsman noted, "A death would liven things up" and there is "too much verbiage [and] conversational psychotherapy."[ 53]

Released in 2009, Morrison's third novel Ménage is about three dysfunctional artists living in a bisexual ménage à trois in 1990s London.[ 54] Morrison based the novel on his experiences within the fashionable nihilistic circles of the British art scene after graduating from art school.[ 28] The novel was inspired by the infamous ménage à trois between Henry Miller, his wife, and her lover.[ 6]

His 2012 novel, Close Your Eyes, is about a woman who was brought up in a hippie commune in the 1960s and 1970s and returns 25 years later to search for the mother who abandoned her.[ 55] Morrison has described the book as a partly autobiographical reaction to "coming to terms with a hippy childhood' and being raised by political extremists.[ 56] [ 57] [ 58] [ 59] Close Your Eyes won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards Book of the Year Fiction Prize in 2013.[ 60]

Morrison's Tales from the Mall (2012) is "a mash-up of fact, fiction, essays, and multi-format media that tells of the rise of the shopping mall".[ 61] Tales from the Mall won Not the Booker Prize in 2012.[ 62] It was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award and the Creative Scotland Writer of the Year Award.[ 63] [ 20]

Morrison's seventh novel, Nina X, was published in 2019.[ 64] Written as a journal, the novel is about a woman who was raised in a commune-cult without toys or books and escapes into the outside world.[ 64] [ 65] Nina X won the 2019 Saltire Society Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year.[ 66] It is currently in development as a movie by director David Mackenzie.[ 15]

How to Survive Everything is Morrison's eighth novel and was published in 2021.[ 67] This thriller, written in the style of a survival guide, is about a teenager who is abducted and taken to a bunker by her father who believes the world is ending.[ 68] [ 65] The novel was longlisted for Bloody Scotland's The McIlvanney Prize 2021.[ 69] In 2022, the novel was optioned for a television series.[ 15]

Literary critic Stuart Kelly described Morrison as "the most fluent and intelligent writer of his generation here in Scotland".[ 70] Professor of Scottish literature Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon says that Morrison's fiction and essays explore the human condition within the globalized world, similar to the subjects of postmodern sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.[ 71] In a summary written for the British Council, Garann Holcombe says:

Morrison's writing has been mistaken for that of a female writer,[ 72] because of his convincing portrayal of "a woman’s point of view about such topics as breastfeeding, depression and how it feels to abandon your child".[ 5]

For Morrison's first five books, he practiced "experiential writing", putting himself into new and often extreme situations to find material for his novels, including becoming a swinger, a secret shopper, and a New Age convert.[ 73] [ 7] He admits, "All my characters are a bit of me but pushed to limits...."[ 7]

As an adult, Morrison learned to manage his stutter.[ 10] He married and had two children.[ 7] After a film project he had worked on for two years in New York fell apart in 2005, Morrison says he "cracked up" and turned to "dangerous, alcohol-fuelled behaviour".[ 7] He lost his home and his marriage ended in divorce.[ 6] [ 7]

He is now married to Emily Ballou, an Australian-American poet and former lesbian whom he met in 2006.[ 7] [ 76] The couple lives in Glasgow.[ 7] [ 9] They have collaborated on several screenwriting projects.[ 76]