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Ewan Morrison

Scottish author and screenwriter (born 1968) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ewan Morrison
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Ewan Morrison (born 1968) is a Scottish author, cultural critic, director, and screenwriter. He has published eight novels and a collection of short stories, as of 2021. His novel Nina X won the Saltire Society Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year 2019. Irvine Welsh described Morrison as "the eminent fiction writer of our times" [1]

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Life

Morrison was born in Wick, Caithness, Scotland in 1968.[2][3] His parents are singer Edna Morrison and the poet, painter, and librarian David Morrison.[4][5] His father was a "literary figure of national significance"[4] but was also an alcoholic.[6][7] In interviews and essays, Morrison has talked about his unorthodox childhood in Caithness as a "hippie experiment".[8]

Morrison attended Pulteneytown Academy and Wick High School.[9] He was bullied by other children because he grew up as a cultural outsider and had a stutter.[10][7]

As a teenager, Morrison enjoyed making figures from modeling clay and decided to attend art school.[7] He attended Glasgow School of Art where he experimented with portrait painting and photography under Thomas Joshua Cooper before discovering documentary film making.[3][7] He graduated in 1990 with a first-class degree in art documentaries and also won the dissertation prize.[7][3]

Morrison has been a member of several organisations he later described as cults, the Socialist Workers Party, an organisation related to Tvind, and a New Age group.[11]

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Career

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Film and television

Morrison worked as a television and film writer and director from 1990 to 2004.[12] In 1992, he wrote scripts in Angers, France for three months after winning the Pepinières Scholarship Pour Jeunes Artistes Européens.[13] The Scottish Arts Council gave Morrison a Media Artists Award in 1994, allowing him to develop and direct several short films.[13]

In 2000, Morrison was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Director (Television) and Best TV Production for I Saw You.[14] I Saw You won the Royal Television Society Programme Awards for Best Regional Drama in 2001.[15][16]

From 2003 to 2005, Morrison was a resident scriptwriter at Madstone Films in New York.[12][6] However, after two years of work, his film project fell apart.[7] His first feature film screenplay, Swung (2007), was an adaptation of his novel.[17] Morrison was also a scriptwriter for Cold Call and Netflix's Outlaw King.[18]

Cultural critic

Morrison regularly writes as a cultural commentator for newspapers, including The Guardian,[19][20] The Scotsman,[21] The Telegraph,[22] and The Times.[23] He is also a contributor to magazines such as Bella Caledonia,[24] The Psychologist,[25] Psychology Today,[26] Quillette,[27] and the literary journal 3:AM Magazine[28].

At the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2011, Morrison gave a talk where he predicted the end of print books in 25 years; a related article followed this in The Guardian.[29] He wrote that it will be impossible for authors to continue to make a living writing books due to changes in sales models and the decline of advances from publishers.[29] He has also written about the role of fan fiction in publishing and what he had dubbed the "self-epublishing bubble".[30][31]

Morrison was originally a supporter of Scottish independence; however, he later publicly stated that he had changed his mind and voted for remaining in the United Kingdom.[32][33][34]

Morrison says he uses writing to unravel the utopian/apocalyptic mindset that he was brought up with.[35] In 2016, he gave a TEDx Talk on the history and consequences of utopian projects.[35] He has also written articles about collectives and utopian projects.[36][37] His writings on this topic range from "top 10 books about communes" to an article about cults for Psychology Today.[38][39]

In a September 2014 article in The Guardian, Morrison said that young adult dystopian fiction serves as propaganda for "right-wing libertarianism".[40] This piece "sent shockwaves through sci-fi fandom",[41] resulting in responses from other writers and scholars.[42][43]

Author

In 2005, Morrison received the Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary, a cash award that allows unpublished writers to devote time to writing.[12][44] Published a year later in 2006, Morrison's first book, The Last Book You Read and Other Stories, is a short story collection that explores relationships in the era of globalisation. The Times said it was "the most compelling Scottish literary debut since Trainspotting".[45] The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature says, "Undeniably Morrison’s collection of short stories makes a contribution to contemporary world literature".[46] However, Arena magazine responded by calling Morrison a "Scottish purveyor erudite filth".[7] One of the stories from the collection was made into the short film None of the Above.[47]

In 2006, Morrison received the UNESCO/Edinburgh City of Literature residency at Varuna, The Writer's House in Australia.[12] That same year, he was a finalist for the 2006 Arena Magazine Man of the Year Literature Prize.[12] New Statesman named Morrison to its list of "five young writers to watch" in March 2007.[48]

Morrison's first novel, Swung (2007) was about a Glasgow yuppie couple who work for a television company and get involved with the swinging scene.[49][50][12] The novel was adapted into a film in 2015, with Morrison writing the screenplay.[51] Distance was Morrison's second novel. It explored phone sex, parenthood, and two people involved in a long-distance relationship.[50][7] The Telegraph said, "[Morrison’s] narrative voice is completely original. His prose feels utterly contemporary, with a smooth, readable texture."[50] The Times called it "utterly compelling...Morrison is one of the finest novelists around".[52] However, other reviewers found the book depressing; Jonathan Cape of The Scotsman noted, "A death would liven things up" and there is "too much verbiage [and] conversational psychotherapy."[53]

Released in 2009, Morrison's third novel Ménage is about three dysfunctional artists living in a bisexual ménage à trois in 1990s London.[54] Morrison based the novel on his experiences within the fashionable nihilistic circles of the British art scene after graduating from art school.[28] The novel was inspired by the infamous ménage à trois between Henry Miller, his wife, and her lover.[6]

His 2012 novel, Close Your Eyes, is about a woman who was brought up in a hippie commune in the 1960s and 1970s and returns 25 years later to search for the mother who abandoned her.[55] Morrison has described the book as a partly autobiographical reaction to "coming to terms with a hippy childhood' and being raised by political extremists.[56][57][58][59] Close Your Eyes won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards Book of the Year Fiction Prize in 2013.[60]

Morrison's Tales from the Mall (2012) is "a mash-up of fact, fiction, essays, and multi-format media that tells of the rise of the shopping mall".[61] Tales from the Mall won Not the Booker Prize in 2012.[62] It was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award and the Creative Scotland Writer of the Year Award.[63][20]

Morrison's seventh novel, Nina X, was published in 2019.[64] Written as a journal, the novel is about a woman who was raised in a commune-cult without toys or books and escapes into the outside world.[64][65] Nina X won the 2019 Saltire Society Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year.[66] It is currently in development as a movie by director David Mackenzie.[15]

How to Survive Everything is Morrison's eighth novel and was published in 2021.[67] This thriller, written in the style of a survival guide, is about a teenager who is abducted and taken to a bunker by her father who believes the world is ending.[68][65] The novel was longlisted for Bloody Scotland's The McIlvanney Prize 2021.[69] In 2022, the novel was optioned for a television series.[15]

Themes and style

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Literary critic Stuart Kelly described Morrison as "the most fluent and intelligent writer of his generation here in Scotland".[70] Professor of Scottish literature Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon says that Morrison's fiction and essays explore the human condition within the globalized world, similar to the subjects of postmodern sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.[71] In a summary written for the British Council, Garann Holcombe says:

In many ways, Morrison’s work, like that of Michel Houellebecq, who is very much his literary forebear, is extremely frightening. It deals with illusion and distance; with everything we manufacture to move us from language, dialogue, contact, knowledge, love, ourselves...In his universe, we are naive participants in an endless narrative invention based on a palimpsest of lies, stories and half-truths – wanting colour, but with no interest in what that colour is made of.[12]

Morrison's writing has been mistaken for that of a female writer,[72] because of his convincing portrayal of "a woman’s point of view about such topics as breastfeeding, depression and how it feels to abandon your child".[5]

For Morrison's first five books, he practiced "experiential writing", putting himself into new and often extreme situations to find material for his novels, including becoming a swinger, a secret shopper, and a New Age convert.[73][7] He admits, "All my characters are a bit of me but pushed to limits...."[7]

Awards

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Personal life

As an adult, Morrison learned to manage his stutter.[10] He married and had two children.[7] After a film project he had worked on for two years in New York fell apart in 2005, Morrison says he "cracked up" and turned to "dangerous, alcohol-fuelled behaviour".[7] He lost his home and his marriage ended in divorce.[6][7]

He is now married to Emily Ballou, an Australian-American poet and former lesbian whom he met in 2006.[7][76] The couple lives in Glasgow.[7][9] They have collaborated on several screenwriting projects.[76]

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Works

Film and television

Novels

  • —— (2007). Swung. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 9780224078764.
  • —— (2008). Distance. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0224082372.
  • —— (2009). Ménage. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0224084406.
  • —— (2012). Tales from the Mall. Cargo. ISBN 978-0956308375.
  • —— (2012). Close Your Eyes. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0224096232.
  • —— (2019). Nina X. Fleet. ISBN 978-0708899021.
  • —— (2021). How to Survive Everything. Contraband. ISBN 978-1913393151.
  • —— (2025). For Emma. Leamington. ISBN 9781914090950.

Short story collection

  • —— (2005). The Last Book You Read and Other Stories. Chroma. ISBN 1845020480.

Articles

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References

External links

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