Education
Welsh studied History at Glasgow University and traded in second-hand books for several years before publishing her first novel.
Welsh studied History at Glasgow University and traded in second-hand books for several years before publishing her first novel.
She is based in Glasgow, Scotland. Welsh"s second major work, the novella Tamburlaine Must Die (2004), fictionally recounts the last few days in the life of 16th-century English dramatist and poet Christopher Marlowe, author of Tamburlaine the Great. Her third novel, The Bullet Trick (2006), is set in Berlin, London and Glasgow and narrated from the perspective of magician and conjurer William Wilson.
Her fourth novel, Naming the Bones, was published by Canongate Books in March 2010.
Her fifth novel, The Girl on the Stairs is a psychological thriller set in Berlin, and was released in August 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton. Her sixth novel, A Lovely Way to Burn was released in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton, and in 2015 a sequel, Death is a Welcome Guest was published.
In 2009, she donated the short story "The Night Highway" to Oxfam"s Ox-Tales project, four collections of United Kingdom stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the "Air" collection.
As of December 2010, she is the Writer in Residence at Glasgow University and Glasgow School of Artist
She lives with the writer Zoë Strachan.