Rodge Glass is the multi-award-winning author of nine books including his biography of polymath Alasdair Gray which won a Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction. Other books include three novels, a collection of short stories and a graphic novel, while he has also written audio stories for children. Recent work includes Michel Faber: The Writer & His Work (2023) and Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir, which explores his rare blood condition and acts as a biography of his nephew’s short life. It was nominated for Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Saltire Society Awards 2025, a chapter of the book winning the Anne Brown Essay Prize. Rodge is a regular contributor to BBC arts programmes and is much in demand at book festivals nationally and internationally as both an author and a host. Rodge is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde. His new book, As One: Remaking Suede (New Modern) is published on August 27th 2026.
Rodge is represented by Jenny Brown of Jenny Brown Associates. You can find his author page here.
Photo: Rodge, 2026, in Glasgow, photo by Alasdair Watson.
Rodge’s books
No Fireworks (a novel, Faber & Faber)
Hope for Newborns (a novel, Faber & Faber)
Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography (biography, Bloomsbury)
Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs (novel, Serpent’s Tail)
LoveSexTravelMusik: Stories for the Easyjet Generation (short story collection, Freight)
Michel Faber: The Writer & his Work (literary biography, Liverpool University Press)
Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir (memoir, Taproot Press)
As One: Remaking Suede (biography, New Modern)
Other key works
‘A Little Light’ (audio story for children, BBC)
Nominations & Prizes
Dylan Thomas Prize (nominated)
Authors’ Club First Novel Award (nominated)
Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction (winner, for Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography)
Anne Brown Essay Prize (winner, for ‘On the Covenant, from Joshua in the Sky)
Rodge Glass is the author of nine books published since 2005: No Fireworks (a novel, Faber & Faber), Hope for Newborns (a novel, Faber & Faber), Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography (Bloomsbury), Dougie’s War (a graphic novel, with Dave Turbitt, Freight Books), Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs (a novel, Serpent’s Tail), Stories for the EasyJet Generation (short story collection, Freight Books), Michel Faber: The Writer & his Work (Liverpool University Press) Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir (Taproot Press, September 2024) and most recently As One: Remaking Suede (New Modern, August 2026). He is also the author of two audio stories for children: ‘A Little Light’ (2023) and ‘The Magic of Stories’ (2024), both available on BBC Sounds as part of the ‘Time for a Story’ series. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Take Four Books, as well as BBC Scotland’s Sunday Morning programme as a commentator, and is much in demand at book festivals locally, nationally and internationally as both an author and a host. Rodge is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde. Rodge’s work has been nominated for ten national and international awards, including the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Authors’ Club Awards while books and individual works have been translated into languages such as Italian, Spanish, French and Serbian. His biography of Alasdair Gray won a Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction and his essay ‘On the Covenant’ won the 2023 Anne Brown Essay Prize, hosted by the Wigtown Book Festival.
More detail:
Over the years Rodge’s work has been nominated for numerous awards, both national and international, including the Authors’ Club Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Frank O’Connor Award and the Saltire Award, and he won a Somerset Maugham Award for Non-Fiction in 2009. Rodge has also written for The Guardian, The Paris Review, The Herald, The Scotsman and others. His various fictions have been translated into Albanian, Danish, German, Hebrew, Spanish and Slovenian, and he has appeared at international literary festivals around the world, including New York, Toronto and Rome. His novel Voglio la Testa di Ryan Giggs was published in Italian (66thand2nd, Roma) in 2014, and the short story collection Price za Izidzet generaciju was published in Serbian (Rasic Literary Workshop, Belgrade) in 2016. Recent critical work includes two chapters in Michel Faber: Critical Essays (Glyphi, 2020, image below) and a chapter in Scottish Writing After Devolution: Edges of the New (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). Recent nonfiction writing includes ‘On Speculation’ in New Writing Scotland 40: No One Remembers the Birdman (ASL, 2022), ‘On Waves’, in Epoch Journal, Issue 4 (2021) ‘On Biography’, published in Gutter magazine in August 2023, and ‘Return to ‘The Gorbals’ in New Writing Scotland 43: A Chaos of Light (2025).
Rodge is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where he was the Convener of the MLitt in Creative Writing from 2020 to 2025, before handing over to Dr. Jessica Widner. In 2021, he was Convener of the 1st International Alasdair Gray Online Symposium, and in 2022 he was Convener of the 2nd International Alasdair Gray Conference: Across Space & Form, hosted at the University of Strathclyde and in partner venues right across the city of Glasgow.
Rodge is also an experienced editor of over twenty novels and short story collections, inclluding the Saltire Award-winning Goblin by Ever Dundas, Treats by Lara Williams, and The Book of the Gaels by the renowned Scottish writer and musician James Yorkston (Oldcastle Books, 2022).
Rodge Glass 