Sep 29, 2019
Chris Dolan has published four novels (Ascension Day, Redlegs, Potter's Field and Aliyyah), two collections of short stories and two non-fiction books. He has had three full-length stage plays produced internationally, with five shorter pieces and four collaborations with Spanish dramatists. He has written over 50 hours of television, and more of radio drama. He has worked in collaboration with visual artists on several pieces of public art, has published poems, broadcasts regularly and writes for Scottish and London newspapers.
Novels
- Ascension Day (Headline Review, 1999) won the McKitterick First Novel Prize.
- "…Dolan's post-industrial and post-imperialist Glasgow: "[s]uch quiet, modest little groupings of streets, yet their shadow stretched and fell for thousands of miles, as afar as Africa, India, America." This long-range view gives the novel great power, as Dolan draws his characters inexorably together, in the lost, once-great, city on the Clyde." – Christopher Hart, Scottish Review of Books.[2]
- Redlegs (Vagabond Voices, 2012)
- "Good things come to those who wait, and this is a good thing… An engrossing and compelling novel... lingering richly in the memory… A fine novel" – The Scotsman.[3]
Short stories
Poor Angels (Polygon, 1995) was shortlisted for the Saltire Prize, and included both the winning story for 1995 Scotland on Sunday / Macallan Prize (Sleet and Snow), and runner-up the following year (Year of the Vezzas).
- "He holds you in a tight grip right from the start and manages to combine a sense of raw nostalgia with a profoundly moving atmosphere of love and loss." – Scotland on Sunday[4] on Sleet and Snow.
Non-fiction titles
An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald (Birlinn 2009)
- "Dolan's book is both personal and universal." – The Scotsman.[5]
Plays
His first play was The Veil (1991), Sabina (1998), The Reader (2000), and The Angel's Share (2000).[6]
Writing for screen and radio
Some of his work has appeared on the radio, including four original plays and many adaptations, including Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson and several of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels. His four-part modern take on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was broadcast in October 2012.[6]
He has written for BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio 3, and BBC Radio 4. He has written such screenplays as Poor Angels and Ring of Truth as well as TV drama documentaries, An Anarchist's Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald, Barbado'ed both broadcast by BBC and Red Oil for Channel 4. He also has written extensively for Taggart, Take the High Road, Machair (TV series), and River City for which he has been writing since its inception.[6]