Born in Bridge of Weir in 1961, Stewart Ennis began his career as a journalist and a nurse, but now works as a writer, actor, lecturer and occasional photographer. He was a founding member of the acclaimed Benchtours theatre ensemble with whom he created many touring shows throughout the nineties and noughties. For several years he was creative writing lecturer at HMP Shotts and other Scottish prisons, and worked with Vagabond Voices on an anthology of prison writing (Visiting Time). He’s had short stories and poems published in Gutter Magazine, The Curlew (Wales), The Caterpillar (Ireland) and various other anthologies. He was an early recipient of a Playwright Studio Scotland Ignite award and has written a number of works for theatre including, The Darkroom, Robert Burns’ Celtic Complex, One Straight Line, The Taking of Zena Charbonne, and The Monster and Mary Shelley. In 2019 he was awarded the Aberdeen-Curtin Alliance scholarship to study a PhD within the creative departments of Aberdeen University and Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Blessed Assurance (Vagabond Voices, 2019) is his first novel.