Gillian is a multi-media artist and writer of Scottish and Irish heritage, who grew up in Dundee and now makes her home overlooking the river Tay in Fife, where she wanders the river banks and watches the wild geese with her two daughters. A daydreamer at heart, she is known for the light in her work and loves expansive skies, cold North Sea air, big unanswerable questions and all things storytelling.

She is the creator of several picture books and is a ‘USA Today’ bestseller and Junior Library Guild gold award winner, with clients that include Walker Books, Candlewick Press, HarperCollins, Penguin Randomhouse, Penguin Studio, Farrar Strauss Giroux, Faber and Smithsonian. She has also collaborated with BBC, Channel 4, Vogue, Molliemakes, Theatre Hullabaloo, The Civic in Dublin and The Auckland Project, among others.

Weaving in her experiences as a former professional musician, Gillian can also be found more recently developing live storytelling performances for all ages, incorporating narration, illustration, music and more, with collaborators ranging from folk musicians and opera singers to full orchestras. Her particular interest in the environment and conservation is at the heart of these, with the first due to debut in Germany in spring 2026.

Gillian is a big believer in community. Apart from spending most of her life living communally with others, she is also the founder of several social and community enterprises. These include a community arts organisation called ‘Hidden Story’, a literacy development programme called ‘Bobble Hat Books’, and ‘Talking Tapestries’, a story-gathering project using textiles and oral history. She has opened three storytelling pop-up shops in Scotland and England, run a poetry festival and helped publish three books co-created by primary school children. As an artist and researcher, she is particularly interested in how playful and magical environments can change attitudes to learning.

She was previously co-founder of the social enterprise, Tea People and is a trustee of Unltd, the foundation for Social Entrepreneurs and Self Made Studios, offering people an accessible route into fashion and textiles.

An avid and curious wanderer and learner, she has worked extensively in China and India, taken trains from Beijing all the way to France and has visited almost all of the states in the USA as a researcher. Her previous jobs include photographer, auxiliary nurse, charity founder, oboist, funeral organist and parrot-minder- perhaps a bit random but all very excellent inspiration for storytelling, if nothing else!