MACGILLIVRAY is the Highland name of Scottish writer, performance artist and musician Kirsten Norrie, reflecting her matrilineal highland heritage. MacGillivray is the author of two poetry collections and eight albums with the soundtracks to two major British films to her credit. Forthcoming is a non-fiction book and a third poetry collection.
As a performance artist she has worked solo and with groups ‘The Wolf in the Winter’ and the ‘Parlour Collective’ internationally. She has three degrees from the University of Oxford, including an AHRC funded PhD in Scottish Performance and Poetry. MacGillivray has made a Gaelic short film and appeared opposite Toby Jones in ‘By Our Selves’, directed by Andrew Kotting, 2015.
Nominated for a Help Musicians (PRS) New Scottish Performer Award and a Paul Hamlyn Composer Award, MacGillivray is the recipient of four Creative Scotland Open Funding Awards, a Wellcome Trust Sciart Award, a Boise Travel Scholarship from the Slade School of Fine Art, is a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress and was a Fine Art Fellow at the University of Gloucester.
From a position firmly grounded in Scottish tradition and performance MacGillivray lends her own perspective to Oran Bagraidh, producing her own English poem, inspired by the song but musically taking its cue from more gothic, dream pop sounds.