About

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author. He is the Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Makar (Poet Laureate).

He's unfurled three acclaimed collections of poetry, his most recent, The Cat Prince & Other Poems (Little Brown, 2023), won Best Poetry at the 2023 Books Are My Bag Readers Awards.

His prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022 in the UK & North America – it was a Sunday Times Critics Choice and shortlisted for Best Non-Fiction at the Saltire Scottish National Book Awards. His ‘hotly contested’ debut novel, Muckle Flugga, will be published by Faber in May 2025.

Pedersen has been shortlisted for the Forward Prizes for Poetry and won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and the John Mather's Trust Rising Star of Literature Award.

With work anthologised by the likes of Pan MacMillan and Canongate, Pedersen has collaborated with musicians, film-makers, and visual artists. His writing has appeared in the likes of: The Poetry Review, The Guardian, New Statesman, The Rialto, The Dark Horse, Gutter, The Scotsman, Q Magazine, and more.

Pedersen also co-founded Neu! Reekie! – a prize-winning literary production house that produced cutting edge shows in Scotland and the world over for over ten years. Within this capacity he has produced and curated events for: Edinburgh International Festival; Edinburgh International Book Festival; Hull City of Culture; Mayor of London’s Borough of Culture; BBC Arts; and more. He also co-edited the Neu! Reekie! anthology series, published by Polygon Books, charting ten years of Neu! Reekie! through poetry and music.

You can follow him on Instagram: @michaelpedersenoyster; and twitter: @ScribePedersen