Liz Lochhead – biography
Liz was born in Motherwell and educated at Dalziel High
School. She studied at Glasgow School of Art and went
on to become an art teacher, working in several
secondary schools before becoming a full-time writer.
Her first collection of poems was published in 1972. Her
fifth collection of poems, 'The Colour of Black and White'
fulfilled a lifelong ambition to work with a great Scottish
printmaker on an illuminated book. The book includes
linocuts and woodcuts by Willie Rodger.
A playwright since the early 1980s, Liz Lochhead has
written for major Scottish theatre companies, both original dramas and translations or
adaptations. Original plays include the award-winning, 'Mary Queen of Scots got her head
chopped off'. Plays she has adapted and given a Scottish voice to include Euripides' Medea,
Sophocles' The Theban Plays, as well as Moliere's Tartuffe.
She is in demand all over Britain and internationally as a performer of her own work and is a
frequent radio broadcaster.