Iain Hood was born in Glasgow and grew up in the seaside town of Ayr. He attended the University of Glasgow and Jordanhill College, and later worked in education in Glasgow and the west country. He attended the University of Manchester after moving to Cambridge, where he continues to live with his wife and daughter. His first novel, This Good Book, was published in 2021.
Portrait by Jeremy Andrews
Exercises in Biographical Sketch
Iain Hood has no idea why you would care where he was born or grew up or which universities he attended over the years. He doesn’t know why you would be interested in where he worked and now works or what he did or where he continues to live, nor with whom. In fact, Iain Hood was born and grew up and worked at something but now he works at something else. He got an education. Now, he lives. There.
Iain Hood was born in Glasgow and attended the University of Glasgow and the University of Manchester. He worked in education in Glasgow, the West Country and Cambridge for a number of years, continuing to write fiction throughout this time. With the publication of his first novel, This Good Book, Iain Hood has the hard-won and probably pointless, now, validation of being able to say in public that he is a writer. Hey, wait, what’s Iain Hood doing here? Is Iain Hood playing with the form of the biographical sketch? Is it Iain Hood that is actually writing this? And whose voice is this in now, these questions? Is it the writer’s or the reader’s? Meaning my voice? Oh, Iain Hood is just playing at it now. How annoying.
Iain Hood is a dreamer. They never learn. They never… learn. He’s beyond the point of no return. And it’s too late, the damage is done. This goes beyond him. Beyond you. A white room by a window where the sun comes through. He is just happy to serve, happy to serve. You.
With the publication of his first novel, Iain Hood’s shell is smashed, his juices flowing, wings twitch, legs are going. He won’t get sentimental; that always ends up drivel. One day he is going to grow wings, it’ll be a chemical reaction, he’ll be hysterical and useless, let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground. He knows where he is with the floor collapsing, bouncing back and one day… he is going to grow wings, a chemical reaction, and he’ll know where he is. He’ll know where he is.
Iain Hood is driftin’, driftin’, driftin’, driftin’. He’s been so high, he never wanted to come down. He’s been so lost, he never wanted to be found. He’s all hung over with bad dreams, he stumbled into messy scenes. He’s coming down. He can’t face the dawn. He’s coming down. He feels too far gone. He’s been driftin’, He’s been strung-out, he’s been burned. He’s been lonely, to the point of no return. He drank himself to sleep last night, he’s seen the world through bloodshot eyes. He’s coming down. He can’t face the dawn. He’s coming down. He feels too far gone. Highs and pills won’t heal his ills, but they’ve made him feel better for a little while. He’s coming down. He’s coming down. He’s coming down.
Iain Hood must be losing his mind. He keeps on trying to find a way out, but it’s ok you don’t lock the door anymore. He, you know he never goes out. And you know that he starts to forget things, but it’s ok, they weren’t essential anyway. He, and when he starts to look back, he feels like he’s spent his whole life just kicking round and not getting in the way. And now, and maybe now he should change, because he’s starting to lose all his faith while those around him are beaten down each day.
Iain Hood’s collection of poems did not win the Forward Prize in 2007. He was not longlisted for the 2011 Booker Prize and not shortlisted for the 2017 Booker. He did not win the inaugural Goldsmith’s Prize, that was Eimear McBride. He did not subsequently win the 2016 Goldsmith’s, that was Mike McCormack. His work has not appeared in Granta, The White Review or The Stinging Fly. He has not been translated into over twelve languages. He has not been widely anthologised and his writing has not been turned into broadcasts, films or dance theatre. He has not been the recipient of many prizes and awards, and certainly not most recently the Scottish Book of the Year.
Iain Hood was born in 1965, before most of you were… well, born. With the publication of his first novel, This Good Book, he’s just glad the waiting is over.
Iain Hood was born in Glasgow, Scotland and now lives in Cambridge, England. This Good Book is his first novel. Well, first novel to be published. There were a few written before that. Iain Hood does not let go of the past easily, apparently.
Iain Hood, Iain Hood, Iain Hood. It’s all about bloody Iain bloody Hood, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Why don’t you just shut up about Iain Hood?
In the rich tradition of Joyce and Proust and Woolf and Beckett and Perec and Trocchi and Spark and Gray and Kelman and Smith (both of them) and Donleavy and Camus and Sartre and Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet and Borges and Vila-Matas and Zambra, comes Iain Hood. One thinks of ‘Yeah, right.’
Born in Glasgow, Iain Hood grew up in Ayr. You might know where that is. He wrote a poem, ‘In Ayr/I suffocated’. Teenage stuff. He got back to Glasgow as soon as he could. Then he was forced into an adult life of sorts with a move south, first to near Glastonbury. No point saying exactly where. If he were telling you, you’d mistakenly think he was saying ‘Wales’. All the while he dreamed of being a writer. Escape fantasy stuff. He didn’t like his job much. Then came the move to Cambridge and studying an MA in Manchester. Writer stuff. Then the ebb and flow of more dreaming and trying to be a writer, and trying to be a writer and the smashing to smithereens of the dream of being a writer that writing and submitting can entail. ‘Poor me’ stuff. And then, after many years, decades really, it seemed like the dreaming and trying would go nowhere and did he want to be a writer anyway? So, of course, of course, that’s how we get to the publication of his debut novel, This Good Book. ‘All came right in the end, eh?’ stuff.
