Douglas Bruton

Douglas Bruton is the author of Blue Postcards (2021), With or Without Angels (2022) and Woman in Blue (2025).

Born in Edinburgh, Douglas spent most of his working life as an English and guidance teacher. Now retired, Douglas continues to reside in Scotland where he writes in his spare time. Blue Postcards was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2021. His short fiction has appeared in various publications including Northwords Now, New Writing Scotland, Aesthetica, The Fiction Desk and the Irish Literary Review, and has won competitions including Fish and the Neil Gunn Prize.

A short Q&A with Douglas Bruton can be seen below:

How did you start writing and what does writing mean to you?

I initially wanted to be an illustrator and had lots of ideas for books but couldn’t get anyone to write for me and couldn’t actually write anything worth reading myself. Too many crossings out and scribbled alterations. The mess on the page (which reflected the mess in my brain) inhibited my creativity – I blame my mother’s insistence on keeping everything neat and tidy. Then I discovered the computer and how pages always stay clean no matter how many changes you make to a page. That freed me up. I discovered then that writing expressed me better than any illustrations I did.

Did you always want to be a writer?

I was a writer without talent at school. I tried to write a novel when I was seventeen. It went on for pages and pages… but I think it was pretty awful. I tried writing poetry at university but it was mannered and awkward. I knew books were important in my life but in my twenties I was resigned to being an avid reader. Then I sort of bumped into writing again when I was thirty years old, found I now could do it and haven’t looked back.

What’s your favourite book and who is your favourite author?

This is perhaps the hardest question so far – to narrow down my reading to just one book! I rarely read books more than once but one book I keep returning to is Independent People by Haldor Laxness. The central character is just so strong and the world created so different from my own and so hard and punishing. The book is my go to summer holiday reading. I would also have to include Dubravka Ugresic’s The Museum of Unconditional Surrender – structurally quite experimental writing, extremely clever and beautifully written. Oh and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – the writing is just painfully exquisite; and John Berger’s Photocopies (or any of his fiction really); and Joy Ladin’s The Book of Anna; and Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory… I could go on!

Read our full interview with Douglas Bruton about Blue Postcards here, and his interview about With or Without Angels (along with an exclusive extract) here.