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Gavin Francis

All of the information on this page has been provided by the author. If you need an author to have specialist skills, experience or knowledge please ask for more information about this ahead of booking them for an event. Please note that Scottish Book Trust cannot carry out Disclosure checks on Live Literature authors for most events. It is the responsibility of the person organising the event to carry out the appropriate Disclosure checks.
Other contact method: Agent (Jenny Brown): [email protected]
Local authority: Edinburgh City
Languages: English
Author type: Writer
Gavin Francis's headshot

Gavin Francis qualified in medicine from Edinburgh in 1999, then spent ten years travelling, visiting all seven continents; from 2006 to 2008 he drove between Scotland and New Zealand by motorcycle.

He is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Times, London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and is the author of True North: Travels in Arctic Europe (2008), Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins (2012) - which was SMIT Scottish Book of the Year 2013 and shortlisted for the Costa, Ondaatje, Banff, & Saltire Prizes, Adventures in Human Being (2015) - which won Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2015, was the Observer's Science Book of the Year, and was a winner in the BMA Book Awards, and Shapeshifters: On Medicine & Human Change (2018), which was a book of the year in the Sunday Times and the Scotsman. His fifth book, Island Dreams, will be published in 2019.

His books have been translated into 18 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and lives and practises medicine in Edinburgh. (Photo credit: Thomas Farnetti)

Websites featuring the author

Local authorities will visit

Aberdeen City; Aberdeenshire; Angus; Argyll and Bute; Clackmannanshire; Dumfries and Galloway; Dundee; East Ayrshire; East Dunbartonshire; East Lothian; East Renfrewshire; Edinburgh City; Falkirk; Fife; Glasgow City; Highland; Inverclyde; Midlothian; Moray; Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles); North Ayrshire; North Lanarkshire; Orkney Islands; Perth and Kinross; Renfrewshire; Scottish Borders; Shetland; South Ayrshire; South Lanarkshire; Stirling; West Dunbartonshire; West Lothian

Events will deliver

Panel event; Reading; Talk; Chairing events

Topics of work

Adventure; Biography & memoir; Coasts, seas & oceans; Health including mental health & wellbeing; Island communities; Nature; Travel writing

Age groups published for

Adults

Age groups will work with

18+

Audience size

0-10; 11-30; 31-100; 100-500; 500+