Biography
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Mandy Haggith was born and brought up in Northumberland. Since 1999 she has lived on a coastal wooded croft in Assynt, in the northwest highlands of Scotland, writing novels, poetry and non-fiction, and sailing.
Mandy first studied piano, philosophy, maths and artificial intelligence, and her PhD was about situations where people disagree, particularly about environmental issues. In the mid 1990s she left academia to write, carry out research and campaign for the world’s forests. She returned to study creative writing, gaining an MLitt with distinction in 2005 and continued working as a forest campaigner until 2018, when she became a lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of the Highlands and Islands. She is an honorary research fellow at the Scottish Association for Marine Science.
Mandy's forest-related work has ranged from research for the Centre for International Forestry Research, collaborating with scientists around the world, to helping community organisations (including Culag Community Woodland Trust and Assynt Foundation) to create visions and management plans for their land. As an activist she has lobbied at the United Nations, worked for a Green Member of the Scottish Parliament and for international environmental organisations including Greenpeace, WWF, Fern and Taiga Rescue Network.
The use of forests for the production of paper has been an abiding interest and from 2005-2009, and again from 2012 until 2018, she was international co-ordinator of the Environmental Paper Network, a global network of more than 150 organisations campaigning for sustainable paper production. Her concern that the environmental and social impacts of the paper industry are poorly understood by non-specialists culminated in a book, Paper Trails: From Trees to Trash - the True Cost of Paper. Published by Virgin Books/Random House in 2008, it was based on Mandy's five-month long global journey through Europe, Russia, China, South-East Asia and North America, witnessing where all the paper we use comes from.
Mandy is passionate about literature. She has had five collections of poetry published: letting light in, Castings, A-B-Tree, Why the Sky is Far Away and Briny. She has also edited an anthology of tree poems, Into the Forest. Her first novel, The Last Bear, was published by Two Ravens Press in 2008 and won the Robin Jenkins Literary Award in 2009. Her second novel, Bear Witness, was published by Saraband in 2013. Her third, The Walrus Mutterer, fourth, The Amber Seeker, and fifth, The Lyre Dancers, are a historical trilogy, set in the Iron Age, also published by Saraband.
She has been awarded two Scottish Arts Council writer’s bursaries and two Creative Scotland artist awards, and has won or been shortlisted for several poetry competitions. She has been a Poet in Residence in the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh and in Inverewe Garden.
Mandy plays an active role in her local community, and has worked and volunteered for many local organisations, particularly community landowners. She is a keen sailor and proud of her skipper ticket.