Margaret Elphinstone

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

Margaret Elphinstone is a British author and one time resident of Shetland, where she was involved in the establishment of the publisher Thuleprint. Some of Elphinstone's books offer fictional treatments of North Atlantic history and geography.

Margaret Elphinstone was born in 1948 in Kent, and educated at Queen's College, London and the University of Durham. She is currently Professor of Writing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where her main areas of academic research are Scottish women writers, and the literature of small islands.

Her fiction includes the novels 'The Incomer' (1987), 'A Sparrow's Flight' (1989), 'Islanders' (1994) and 'The Sea Road' (2000), a re-telling of the Viking exploration of the North Atlantic. She has also published a collection of short stories, 'An Apple From a Tree' (1991), and two books on organic gardening, as well as a volume of poetry, 'Outside Eden' (1990). Her fifth novel, 'Hy Brasil' (2002), is set on a mythical island in the mid-Atlantic.

Her most recent books are 'Voyageurs' (2003), set during the 1812 War in North America, and 'Light' (2005).