Victoria MacKenzie

Victoria MacKenzie is a fiction writer, poet and essayist based in Fife. Her debut novel, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain (Bloomsbury, 2023), explores the lives of the medieval women Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, two of the most important female writers of the Middle Ages. The novel won the Saltire First Book Award and was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It was read on Radio 4 and was a book of the year in the Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Scotsman and the Irish Times. Victoria has had writing residencies in Scotland, Finland and Australia and works as a creative writing mentor. Her second novel, which focuses on the life and work of Victorian art critic John Ruskin, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2025.