Jamie Jauncey

I always wanted to write. When I was young I loved filling up notebooks. At school I wrote stories instead of essays. I sent off my first short story to The Pan Book of Horror Stories when I was 19. It didn't have a title and when they published it they called it Borderline. Ho, hum ...

After studying law at university in Aberdeen I went to South America and wrote some travel pieces that won awards. Then I put my imagination on hold for a few years while I got on with the more prosaic matter of being a journalist and magazine publisher in London.

Eventually the magazine went bust and I fell into writing for businesses. That took a lot of time and energy too. But you can't hold back the stories forever and I published my first novel when I was 40, a few months after returning to live in Scotland.

Today I continue to work with businesses both as a writer and trainer, as well as writing fiction and a little poetry. I'm one of the Scottish founders of 26, a nationwide group of writers, language specialists and business people who champion a more imaginative use of language at work.

I'm also on the board of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the world's largest literary festival. In the past I've been chairman of the Society of Authors in Scotland, a member of the Scottish Arts Council's Literature Committee, and chairman of the judges for both the Scottish Children's Book Awards and the Pushkin Prizes. Nice work if you can get it ...!

My contribution, in collabor-ation with designer Lucy Richards, to the 26 Malts project which, in 2005, paired 26 designers with 26 writers to create labels for 26 Scotch Malt Whisky Society malts. Click on the image for more information.