Catherine Czerkawska

Early life

Born in Leeds, Yorkshire, to Julian Czerkawski and Kathleen Sunter, she attended Holy Family Primary School and Notre Dame Grammar School. The family moved to Ayrshire, Scotland in 1962 where she attended Queen Margaret Academy in Ayr. After graduating from Edinburgh University with an honours degree in English Language and Literature with Mediaeval Studies, she went on to study for a postgraduate Master's degree in Folk Life Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research dissertation on Fishing Traditions in South Ayrshire formed the basis for one of her first non-fictionsn books, Fisherfolk of Carrick. She taught English as a foreign language in Tampere, Finland for two years and at Wroclaw University, drawing on her Polish connections, (sponsored by the British Council) for a further year. On her return she took up a position as Community Writer with the Arts in Fife, based in Cupar and thereafter became a full-time freelance writer.

Career

Czerkawska began her writing life as a poet and radio playwright in Edinburgh. Her first collection of poems, White Boats, was a joint venture with Andrew Greig, published by Garret Arts in 1973. Her first solo collection, A Book of Men, was published by Akros in 1976 and won a Scottish Arts Council New Writing Award. Her first radio play, The Hare and the Fox, was broadcast around this time and she went on to write more than 100 hours of drama for BBC Radio 4. She wrote numerous original plays of which O Flower of Scotland won a Pye Award for Best Original Drama 1980, while Bonnie Blue Hen won a Scottish Radio Industries Club Award for Best Production of 1982. She also created many dramatisations of classics as diverse as Stevenson's Kidnapped and Catriona. Ben Hur and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Her BBC dramatisation of Treasure Island is still available as a CD. Through the 1980s and 90s she continued to write successfully for radio and for television including a six-part series for STV, called Shadow of the Stone, starring Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson. She wrote stage plays for Edinburgh's Lyceum and Traverse Theatres including Wormwood, a meticulously researched, ecologically themed play about the Chernobyl disaster. She worked for several years on Borderline Theatre's community projects, with artistic director John Murtagh. She was also commissioned to write audio material for the National Trust for Scotland, for Falkland Palace, Bannockburn and Culross in Fife. Her first published novel was the book of the television series, Shadow of the Stone. This was followed by The Golden Apple, written while she and her husband were living and working aboard a 50 foot catamaran in the Canary Isles. The novel is largely set on the Canarian island of La Gomera. The Curiosity Cabinet, a novel based on a trilogy of the author's own radio plays of the same name, was shortlisted for the Dundee Book Prize in 2005 and subsequently published by Polygon. John Burnside describes it as 'a powerful story about love and obligation… a persuasive novel, very well written'. A Kindle version, published by Wordarts, is now available. A major hardback history of the people of Gigha, God's Islanders, was published by Birlinn in 2006. Her stories have been published in an eclectic mix of magazines and anthologies including She, Company, Vogue, New Edinburgh Review and The London Review of Books. Her poem Thread was published in Antonia Fraser's well known anthology of Scottish Love Poems. More recently, Czerkawska has written three plays for Glasgow's lunchtime theatre venue: the Oran Mor’s A Play A Pie and A Pint. Her plays have been published by Nick Hern Books. Other novels include The Amber Heart, Bird of Passage and Ice Dancing, all published by Wordarts. She is currently serving on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland, and offers occasional advice to other professional writers who are considering engaging with digital publishing. She is a regular contributor to online political magazine, The Scottish Review, edited by Kenneth Roy. She writes a monthly blog post for the Authors Electric blog and runs her own writing blog.

Teaching

Czerkawska has run classes and workshops in all aspects of creative writing. She tutored Kilmarnock Gateway Writers for 15 years. She has tutored three courses for the Arvon Foundation at Moniack Mhor, ran workshops for the Traverse Theatre and worked with artistic director John Murtagh on community projects for Borderline Theatre. From 2005 to 2009 she was Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland. She is now part of the Live Literature Scotland's Writers in Public scheme, giving talks and lectures to writers and book groups throughout Scotland. She gives illustrated talks and lectures on Scottish textile history, specifically Ayrshire Whitework and other embroidery, with particular reference to how she uses antique textiles in her fiction.

Personal life

She lives in rural Ayrshire with her artist husband Alan Lees. Their son, Charlie Czerkawski, is a video game designer with Guerilla Tea, living and working in Dundee. She is an active member of her community and is on the management committee of the village's community shop and café. She collects antique textiles and gives illustrated talks about how she incorporates them into her fiction.

Awards and honours

Stage plays

Television drama

Original plays for BBC Radio

Dramatisations and abridgements for BBC Radio

Short stories