Jessie Kesson's life is the story of a writer surviving tremendous odds, and doing it triumphantly. Born illegitimate in the workhouse at Inverness, she survived a deprived, institutionalised childhood. Kesson worked in an extraordinary variety of jobs in London, from cinema cleaner and artist's model to full-time producer for Woman's Hour and skilled social worker - along the way producing striking and accomplished plays and fictions. She is best known for the books and films, The White Bird Passes and Another Time, Another Place. This authorised biography, the first to be written on Kesson, follows this astonishing career, incorporating a wealth of Kesson's private and public writing.

Isobel Murray is a Reader in English at the University of Aberdeen. Her publications include five annotated editions of the work of Oscar Wilde for OUP; she also edited Ten Modern Scottish Novels, various works of Naomi Mitchison, a volume of interviews with Scottish writers and a collection of Kesson's shorter fiction. Her book Jessie Kesson: Writing Her Life won the 2000 National Library of Scotland/Saltire Research Book of the Year. She is an Associate Editor of the New Dictionary of National Biography and Vice President of ASLS.