Candia Frances Juliet McWilliam (born 1 July 1955) is a Scottish author. Her father was the architectural writer and academic Colin McWilliam.

Literary career

Born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, McWilliam was educated at St George's School for Girls in the city and Girton College, Cambridge, where she obtained

first class honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure used for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied, sometimes with significant var ...

. Her first novel, ''A Case of Knives'', published in 1988, was the winner of a Betty Trask Prize. Her second novel, ''A Little Stranger'', was published in 1989. Both books won

Scottish Arts Council The Scottish Arts Council (), was a Scottish public body responsible for the funding, development and promotion of the arts in Scotland. The Council primarily distributed funding from the Scottish Government as well as National Lottery funds ...

Book Awards. '' Debatable Land'', published in 1994, won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and in 1998 its Italian translation won the Premio Grinzane Cavour for the best foreign novel of the year. McWilliam was a judge of the 2006

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

Blindness

In 2004 McWilliam admitted to an audience at the

Edinburgh International Book Festival The Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) is a book festival that takes place during two weeks in August every year in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland. Described as ''The largest festival of its kind in the world'', the festival hosts ...

that she had struggled with

alcoholism Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records. The World He ...

. In early 2006, McWilliam began to experience the effects of

blepharospasm Blepharospasm is a neurological disorder characterized by intermittent, involuntary spasms and contractions of the orbicularis oculi muscle, orbicularis oculi (eyelid) muscles around both eyes. These result in abnormal twitching or blinking, an ...

and became severely

visually impaired Visual or vision impairment (VI or VIP) is the partial or total inability of visual perception. In the absence of treatment such as corrective eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment, visual impairment may cause the individual difficul ...

as a result. This illness caused her eyelids to be permanently shut, although her eyes were still functional. In 2007 she spoke about the experience of blindness at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and in 2008 she wrote an article about her situation for the '' Scottish Review of Books''. In 2009 she underwent an operation which harvested tendons from her leg in order to suspend her eyelids open, thus curing her blindness. In an article in ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

'', McWilliam described her two years of blindness and the pioneering surgery that restored her sight. She went blind, she added, after years of

writer's block Writer's block is a non-medical condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. Writer's block has various degrees of severity, from difficulty in coming ...

— her last novel appeared in 1994 — but she refound her voice while she was blind and dictated to a kind young friend what turned out to be a

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...

, ''What to Look for in Winter'', which was published in 2010. She is now at work on a novel.

Family and personal life

McWilliam's first marriage to Quentin Wallop, 10th Earl of Portsmouth, produced a daughter and a son, Viscount Lymington, but ended in divorce. Her second marriage to Fram Dinshaw resulted in another son. She lived briefly with the Labour MP

Mark Fisher Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Golds ...

.Candia McWilliam profile
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Bibliography

*''A Case of Knives'' (1988) *''A Little Stranger'' (1989) *'' Debatable Land'' (1994) *''Wait Till I Tell You'' (1997) (short stories) *''What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness'' (2010)

References

External links

* Premio Grinzane Cavour {{DEFAULTSORT:McWilliam, Candia 1955 births 20th-century Scottish novelists 20th-century Scottish women writers 21st-century Scottish women writers 20th-century Scottish short story writers Scottish women short story writers 21st-century Scottish memoirists People educated at St George's School, Edinburgh Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Living people Writers from Edinburgh Scottish women novelists British women memoirists

Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. Most of Portsmouth is located on Portsea Island, off the south coast of England in the Solent, making Portsmouth the only city in En ...

Scottish blind people