Kirstin Innes

Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1980, and raised by a single mother.[2] She attended James Gillespie's High School and then University of Aberdeen.

In 2005, Innes moved to Glasgow to work at The Arches. She also worked as Assistant Editor at The List.[3]

Innes's writing is influenced by her mother and grandmother's left-wing politics.[2]

Innes's debut novel, Fishnet (2019), won The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize in 2015[4] and was praised by The New York Times for its depiction of sex workers as "women with rich inner lives and interests".[5] Innes has written about how her friendship with the sex workers' rights activist Laura Lee influenced the novel.[6]

Her second novel, Scabby Queen, was published by 4th Estate in 2020. It was longlisted for the 2020 Gordon Burn Prize.[7]

In November 2021, Salmander Street will publish Brickwork: A Biography of The Arches , co-written by Innes and former The Arches colleague David Bratchpiece.[8]

Innes' partner is the author and playwright Alan Bissett, with whom she has two children.[1] The couple, who met in 2007, have discussed their experiences with IVF publicly with the aim of reducing the stigma around infertility.[9]