Biography of Chris Hannan

Chris Hannan was born in 1958, the fourth of five children, and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland, before going to University College Oxford. After graduating at the age of 20 with a double first in English Literature, he returned to Glasgow to work with homeless people in a night-shelter. His first play was an agit-prop piece for 7:84 (Scotland), co-written with the legendary John McGrath. In 1982 he began a long assocation with the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh for which he wrote Elizabeth Gordon Quinn (1985) - revived in 2006 by the National Theatre of Scotland - and Shining Souls (1996) - which was revived the following year by Sir Peter Hall at the Old Vic in London and subsequently received productions in Chicago and Glasgow. His 1990 play The Evil Doers was produced by The Bush in London and won numerous prizes including a Time Out Award, and in 2001/2 he was the Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellow in Drama at the University of Cambridge. His first novel will be published early in 2008 by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux in the United States, Chatto & Windus in the UK and Commonwealth, and Einaudi in Italy.