Novelist, columnist and broadcaster MC Scott (aka Manda Scott) trained as a veterinary surgeon in Glasgow and worked at the Universities of Cambridge and Dublin, specialising in anaesthesia. A brief three year stint as a Director of the computer games company, Frontier Developments (Elite, Frontier First Encounter, Wallace and Gromit; Elite: Dangerous) bridged the gap from veterinary medicine to writing.

Her novels have been short listed for an Orange Prize, nominated for an Edgar Award and translated into over twenty languages. She was a long term columnist for the Glasgow Herald, is a reviewer for the Independent and has contributed to the Telegraph, Times, Daily Express and BBC History Magazine. She has appeared on Time Team as an expert on the Boudican era and contributed to Radios 4 & 5.

She is honoured to be Founder and current Chair of the HWA and looks forward to the associations continued growth. When not writing, or writing about writing, (or blogging, facebooking and tweeting about writing), she competes at canine agility and teaches shamanic dreaming courses and, of course, the occasional Arvon week somewhere beautiful in the UK countryside.

Her latest novel is Rome: The Art of War. In preparation is a dual timeline novel of Jeanne dArc which lifts the lid on centuries of spin: whatever & whoever else she was, she absolutely wasnt a peasant girl who happened to get on a horse and found she could carry a lance.