Hello,

Welcome to Lesley Glaister's website.

Hi, here you'll find information about myself, my novels, my approach to writing and  details about my teaching and mentoring roles. 


EVENTS:
10.3.17 - Talk and Reading, 7pm Macktaggart's Café, Aberdour, Fife.
17.4.17-22.4.17 Fiction Course with Andrew Greig, guest Ruth Thomas, Moniach Mhor http://www.moniackmhor.org.uk/courses/

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Nice news, Salt are going to be publishing The Squeeze next September, which makes me very happy, they did a great job with Little Egypt and are lovely to work with. I particularly like their idea of publishing just 12 novels a year, one a month, but publishing them properly, rather than churning them out like sausages like some publishers seem to do.

It's the end of a morning's work and my neck is stiff. Sitting at my desk gives me a headache, sometimes it even seems to start a migraine off, so I've developed a comfortable (but probably unhealthy) slumped against pillows posture with laptop on a chopping board on my lap. I'm going to invest in a lap tray and an invalid's Y shaped pillow I think. But even in this semi-recumbent pose I get a stiff neck from craning forward when I get involved, and also strange tingling in my fingers from having to reach slightly upwards... But anyway, back on my new novel, feeling out of touch but refreshed after a couple of weeks off for birthday celebrations and a wonderful family party. I'm relieved and pleased, having spent the morning reading myself back into it, to find there is a world there, and characters waiting, though I'm not quite sure yet what it is they're waiting for ... 

Have since been advised to try standing up - doesn't sound very relaxing though, does it?!
a great job with Little Egypt and are lovely to work with.
The poem below, the title poem of my Mariscat pamphlet, was selected, to my enormous honour and delight, as one of the  Scottish Poetry Library's 20 Best Scottish poems of 2015. www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk

Visiting the Animal


I press my face against the glass
and there he is:
the recognition is complete
my way at least. The padded
luxury of his palms and soles,
the sooty static of his fur,
the lowering brow,
that flat brown stare.

He's in my dreams
but doesn't always wait 
for dreams: black speck
in my periphery, hiss
of fists through grass
makes me wish
for graze of leather lips.

He's shocking -
the heft and burl of him.
Captive, still he's wild.
My heart beats in time with his.
That wild would crush me.
When I leave I carry him
a tiny lope of black
at each cell's rim.