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BIOGRAPHY OF ANNA SMITH

Anna Smith is an award winning journalist, formerly chief reporter of the Daily Record in Scotland and now a columnist with the Sunday Mirror in Scotland.
She divides her time between her homes in Scotland and the west of Ireland.
Her debut novel, Spit Against The Wind, launched her career to much critical acclaim, and one leading newspaper described Smith as ‘a powerful new voice in Scottish fiction.’ Spit continues to sell well in the UK and Australia and has been published in Germany.
Her second novel, The Homecoming, published in hardback and paperback whch was well received. In a review in The Herald in Scotland their critic said: ‘Smith writes with effortless prose.’
Smith and has spent a lifetime in daily newspapers, in a career spanning 24 years she has covered wars across the world as well as major investigations and news stories from Belfast to Dunblane to 9/11.
In her Sunday Mirror Scotland column, Anna shoots from the lip with her outspoken views on everything from politics to showbiz, but with a dash of droll humour and always speaking up for the disadvantaged.
Her style of writing as a journalist won her many awards and she has transferred that gritty, colourful way of writing to fiction, bringing alive the characters in her writing.

THE NOVELS

SPIT AGAINST THE WIND

Anna’s debut novel, was published in 2003 to great critical acclaim throughout the UK, and nominated for the Saltire prize for literature in Scotland. Among the many plaudits for her first work, the Herald critic declared: ‘Smith is a powerful new voice in Scottish fiction.’

Spit is the touching and evocative story of a Scottish childhood, but is a tale that has transferred across the world and sells well in Australia and has been published in Germany. Readers from every corner of the world have contacted Anna to say how they identified with the characters and felt it was their own childhood.

‘Spit is set in the long hot summer of 1968. For ten-year-old Kathleen Slaven and her pals, the school holidays beckon. Into their run-down vilage in the west of Scotland arrives Tony, a real Amercan kd like the ones from the moives, ready to lead them into all kinds of adventure: gaining sweet revenge on their sadistic teacher Miss Gant on a trip to Ayr, discovering the unsettling secrets of ‘Shaggy Island’, and coming up with ways to outwit then people who screw up their lives – like the local priest, Father Flynn.
But the world they live in is a precarious one. And while they escape by playing at TV heroes and filmstars, their mothers grow old before their time on broken promises and fathers make a living in the coal mines or ‘digging ditches in the pissing rain’, often boozing or gambling the wages away while their familis go hungry.
In an impoverished community, suffering and violelnce are never far from home. And even the optimism and escapism of their years cannot protect the children from the tragedies of life.’

CHAPTER ONE
‘WE COULD be anyone we wanted to in our dreams. We were cowboys, riding imaginary horses across grassy planes, clearing fences and firing guns from pointed fingers, then falling down clutching wounds that weren't there. We could argue for hours over whose turn it was to be Blue Boy from the High Chapparal and who would be Manolito. We were the family from The Big Valley and I was Barbara Stanwyck, sitting side-saddle on the wall.
We spoke to each other in Yankee drawl, mimicking with near perfection our heroes from TV war films and westerns. We may have fought a war each day, rustled cattle or killed a few bandits. But in our secret little world there were no sad endings, no tears, no concepts.
In the real world there were psychopathic teachers who got some kind of twisted pleasure out of torturing and humiliating you. There were drunken fathers who blotted out squandered lives in smokey, stinking pubs with men just like them who never even glimpsed their day in the sun. And there were mothers who you could hear weeping in the night as they saw themselves growing old in a world of broken promises and disappointment. Oh yes, and there were the shadowy perverts lurking in lots of corners, in the guise of uncles, priests and family friends.
But in our dreams, in the far flung places we escaped to, nobody could touch us. We were safe and innocent and pure.
All of that changed in the summer of '68.’

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR SPIT AGAINST THE WIND

Aberdeen Press and Journal: ‘Smith has the rare skill of creating a story that envelopes the reader – at times you will feel like you are the fifth kid in Kath’s little gang. Falls into the category of modern Scottish classic literature.’

THE LIST: ‘Portraying childhood or the end of an era is a potential mire of sentimentality into which the unsupecting adult novelist can too easily sink. But Anna Smith does both and never becomes bogbound.’

THE SUNDAY EXPRESS: ‘An endearing coming-of-age novel elivered with a wry and adictive humour. It all adds up to a riveting tale that tanks along without missing a beat.’

THE BELFAST NEWSLETTER: ‘The book leaves you yearning to be ten years old once more when life was simple and fantasy could block out pain.’

GLASGOW EVENING TIMES: ‘Powerful stuff. A great read and hard to put down.’

SUNDAY MAIL: ‘Threaded with gentle humour. Inspirational and heartbreaking.’

MAIL ON SUNDAY: ‘Packed with trauma and drama.’

THE BIG ISSUE: ‘A charming and evocative tale about the glories of youth with a bitersweet tang of reality.’

THE BOOKSELLER: ‘Charming, evocative, nostalgic, moving and highly recommended.’

THE HOMECOMING

Anna’s second novel, The Homecoming, was published in 2004, and again well received by both critics and readers alike. Still retaining the nostalgic theme of her first novel, The Homecoming is set in a farming community in the Ayrshire coast in 1969.

(matt – here we need the flyleaf synopsis from The Homecoming)

Though the 1960s herald flower power, race riots and the Vietnam War, the village of Westerbank in the west of Scotland remains curiously untouched. As the nights draw in, men stand on a corner at the hearet of the village, smoking and sharing the ame jokes and stores that have been passed on for generations. Everyone knows what's happening in the homes of others. Westerbank isn't a place for secrets.
At least, that's what people thought. But when handsome hell-raiser Joe McBride returns after twenty years in America, the village comes alive with whispers. Just why did Joe leave so suddenly all that time ago? And why has he come back? Joe's homecoming strikes fear into the heart of his childhoold friend Frankie Flaherty, who's spent the last twenty years trying to forget the secret Joe left behind - and hide it frkom the wife he adores. As for Joe, he's determined to atone for the sins of the past, but it will take tragedy before he is finaly forgiven.

CHAPTER ONE
‘…..At the corner of the village, just across from the pub, half a dozen men stood passing the time of day, conveying all the gossip to each other, adding on their own little strands. The corner, as it was known, was the focal point for any of the men in the village who had time on their hands and nothing to do with it. It was there every evening as the night drew in they would stand smoking their pipes and puffing fags, that stories and jokes had been passed on for generations. And it was there at the corner, they passed judgement on everything from the price of coal to the size of the breasts on the new young Irish wife of Baldy Cassidy, the widowed baker who had just recently remarried a woman twenty years younger than himself and was the envy of every healthy man in Westerbank.
Inside the pub a fug of smoke hung in the air and clung to the wood panelled walls yellowed from years of pipe and cigarette smoke. In the small snug at the far corner, a couple sat close together, the stain glass window above the swing door disguising their shape and making them look mysterious. Wooden shelves all around the bar were cluttered with the bric a brac gathered from generations of village life. Old football trophies. Darts shields. Faded pictures of young men in ancient football shirts who had gone on to greater things with Celtic or Rangers. A miner's lamp, always polished, stood by a framed black and white picture of grinning teenagers, most of whom had perished in the disaster of 1948.
Frankie and Tom nodded to a group of farmers they knew who were laughing as one of them was relating some kind of story. They all burst into lusty guffaws at the punchline.
The barman, who they guessed must be Mulranney, shoved the two pints of beer Tom requested across the bar to them and smiled.
'On the house,' he said, as Tom was about to hand him a five pound note.
Tom and Frankie looked at each other, surprised, almost suspicious.
'Cheers!' Frankie said, lifting his pint. 'If Loughran had given anybody a free drink we'd have thought we were about to get measured for a wooden waistcoat!' He smiled, at the barman, referring to the frugal former owner of the pub.
'Just getting to know all my customers,' Mulranney said, his smile showing a gap between his two front teeth that gave him a rakish look. 'Everybody I meet for the first time, is getting a free pint. Just the one, mind.'
'Best of luck to you. Cheers pal,' Tom said, lifting his pint to his lips. 'You'd better watch the Badger Ryan over in the corner there! He'll be in here with half a dozen disguises on for the next two weeks to get as much free drink as he can!' Tom joked, loud enough for the Badger Ryan to hear as well.
'Kiss my arse, McBride!,' the Badger said, 'Mr Mulranney here has become a personal friend of mine. And I've put him straight about some of the miserable shites that stoat in and out of here! You know, I might have even mentioned your name!' the Badger was sarcastic, his words slightly slurred. But he seemed to be taking the ribbing in good part.
Tom and Frankie laughed to Mulranney who winked back as though he had already got the measure of Mickey Ryan. It was easy to see why he was nicknamed the Badger. A silver streak of hair ran from the front of his fringe to the crown, and a pinched face and pointed nose, giving him the distinct look of a badger. He would know by now that Ryan was the equivalent of the local newspaper who could tell you everything that moved in and around Westerbank. He was nearly sixty now and though his face showed the deep lines of a man who spent most of his life working outside in all weathers, he still looked fresh. His cheeks, though lean, were ruddy from years of drinking, because he had nobody at home to keep him in check since his mother died ten years ago leaving him to run the small farm on his own. The Badger Ryan was an expert on who was buying what and how much for, and he was always ready to whisper the details of who was cutting whose grass, the local expression for illicit sexual liasons. Tom always felt a little sorry for him because he was the butt of everyone's humour, and he used to think he had the look sometimes of a lonely man who had seemed to arrive at middle age without ever having any joy in his life. Now and again Tom cooked dinner for him, but he could never keep going to him with drink.’

CRTICAL ACCLAIM FOR THE HOMECOMING

DAILY RECORD: ‘Anna smith proves the success of her debut, Spit Against the Wind was no fluke as she demonstrates an outstnding talent for juxtaposing her Celtic humour against he dark deeds of betrayal, greed, lies and cruelty.’

NEWCASTLE JOURNAL: ‘A fine story-teller Sanna Smith’s first novel wesas well received and her follow up is an endearing page turner.’

THE BIG ISSUE; ‘Smith has created a wonderfully genuine set of characters tha prove no matter how hard you try, you cannot run from your past. A truly riveting book.’

THE HERALD; ‘Smith writes with a tight effortless prose that pushes the stoy and the characters to the fore. The Homecoming is mature and thoughtful; a simple but enticing tale told with great skill.’

ANNA SMITH’S CREATIVE WRITING COURSES IN ANDALUCIA
Website www.loscastanos.com
http://www.loscastanos.com/writing.htm
MATT; I would suggest just go into Google and search creative writing courses in Los Castanos and I think it’s the second search and my page comes up. You will get the images of the two novels plus pic of me plus all the info on the website. I’d like this just done as it appears on their website as we are going to try and get people to book it through me – working on the basis that they might have read my novels.