McDermid, Val

Val McDermid is a Scottish crime writer born in Kirkcaldy, Fife. She attended Kirkcaldy High School where she was among a group of pupils that participated in a controversial project for especially talented students based on IQ tests. When she was seventeen, she was the first student from a Scottish state school to be admitted to St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1975. She then got an internship at a Devonshire newspaper, and after taking a degree in journalism she became journalist, working for major newspapers in Manchester and Glasgow. She was based in Manchester, but moved around a great deal. In 1991, she left her job to become a full-time author, but she continued to review crime fiction for the Manchester Evening News and she often appears on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland.