About

Kevin MacNeil is a British novelist, poet and playwright born and raised in the Outer Hebrides. His novels, A Method Actor’s Guide to Jekyll and Hyde (Polygon) and bestselling debut, The Stornoway Way (Penguin), were both published to widespread critical acclaim. MacNeil’s first book, Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides (Canongate), won the Tivoli Europa Giovani International Poetry Prize for best poetry collection published in Europe by a writer under 35. He is also the author of Be Wise Be Otherwise (Canongate) and The Callanish Stoned (Theatre Hebrides), and his short stories have been published extensively.

MacNeil’s latest play, Sweetness, an adaptation of a novel by Swedish author Torgny Lindgren, toured in 2011, and his anthology of poetry from the Scottish islands, These Islands, We Sing, was published by Polygon in June 2011.
He often collaborates with visual artists and musicians. In 2005, the William Campbell and Kevin MacNeil single Local Man Ruins Everything (Fantastic Plastic) was Single of the Week in The Guardian, in The List and on Steve Lamacq’s radio show. The duo’s album will be released in 2012.
MacNeil was the inaugural Iain Crichton Smith Bilingual Writing Fellow and has held further prestigious writing residencies in Sweden (Uppsala University), Bavaria (Villa Concordia) and a number of other places, including lecturing on the Creative Writing MSc at Edinburgh University.
He is also a keen cyclist, and in September 2009 cycled 1300 km of the Danube, from source to Budapest, on a single-speed fixed-gear track bike, for two cancer charities; the BBC filmed a documentary about him and his bike ride which took just a dozen cycling days.
MacNeil currently lives in London.