Rodge Glass

Rodge Glass (born 17 January 1978 in Cheshire) is a British writer.

Biography Glass was born in Cheshire, England. Glass moved to Scotland to receive an undergraduate degree from Strathclyde University. For graduate school, he attended Glasgow University jointly with Strathclyde where he was tutored by Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, Janice Galloway, and received a Master of Philosophy degree in Creative Writing. Glass's biography of Gray won a Somerset Maugham Award for Non-Fiction in 2009, when it was published in an updated edition.

Glass has worked as an editor and writer for multiple publications and written for The Guardian, The Paris Review, The Herald, The Scotsman, and others. In 2013, he began working as a Senior Lecturer at Edge Hill University and Fiction Editor at Freight Books." As of 2025, he is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde.

Since publishing his biography of Alasdair Gray, Glass has continued to work in Gray Studies, publishing creative and critical work on the Glaswegian visual artist and writer. In 2022 he was Co-Convener of the 2nd International Alasdair Gray Conference, which featured newly commissioned work by Ali Smith and Jenny Brownrigg and in his role at Strathclyde he has worked from 2020 to 2025 on a series of Creative Commissions with the Alasdair Gray Archive, where writers are invited to respond to an aspect of Gray's work. Writers featured in this series include: Chitra Ramaswamy, Michael Pedersen, Sara Sheridan and Denise Mina.

In recent years, Glass has hosted literary events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Boswell Book Festival, appeared at festivals in New York, Toronto and Rome, had books translated into Italian and Serbian, individual works translated into Spanish, French and Slovenian, and is a regular panellist on various radio shows. Since 2023 he has been a regular panellist on Radio Scotland's Sunday Morning show and he has appeared regularly on the BBC Radio 4 books programme Take Four Books, alongside the likes of AL Kennedy, Susan Barker and Melissa Lucashenko (2024-25). He has also appeared on Radio 4's The Third Degree, BBC2's Edinburgh Nights, BBC1's The One Show (discussing Alasdair Gray's murals), This Spiritual Life, the Faith Forum and multiple other programmes. In October 2025 he delivered Radio Scotland's Thought for the Day the day after the Manchester synagogue attack.

Glass latest book was Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir. The first book published in Europe on the rare blood condition HHT, it was an attempt to write the life of his nephew Joshua who lives for three hours after he was born in 2017. In interviews around publication, Glass discussed his approach to ethical memoir, writing lives that might otherwise go unseen, and how writing about Joshua's life saved his own. The book took the form of a series of essays, each responding to individual works of art, people, stories, poems and pictures. It also included chapters returning to Glass's writing on Michel Faber and Alasdair Gray. The book's chapter, 'On the Covenant', won the Anne Brown Essay Prize for Scotland in 2023, and was longlisted for the Saltire Society Nonfiction Book of the Year in 2025.

Glass has toured extensively, discussing ethical approaches to writing biography and autobiography.

His latest work is a biography of the British band Suede, entitled As One, focussing on the years since their reformation in 2010. The book will be published on the 27th August 2026.

Awards +Awards for Glass's writing Year Title Award Result Ref. 2006 No Fireworks Authors’ Club First Novel Award Nominee 2006 No Fireworks Dylan Thomas Prize Nominee 2010 Dougie's War: A Soldier's Story (with Dave Turbitt) Scottish Design Awards, 2010 Nominee 2013 LoveSexTravelMusik Frank O’Connor Award Nominee (winner of Saltire Society First Book of the Year) and James Yorkston, editing his novels Three Craws (Freight, 2016) and The Book of the Gaels (Oldcastle Books, 2022).

Biographies Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography (2008) Michel Faber: The Writer & His Work (Liverpool University Press, 2023) Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir (Taproot Press, 2024) As One: Remaking Suede (New Modern, 2026)

Novels No Fireworks (Faber & Faber, 2005) Hope for Newborns (Faber & Faber, 2008) Dougie's War with Dave Turbitt (Freight, 2010, graphic novel) Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs (Tindal Street Press, 2012 / Serpent's Tail, 2013)

Short story collections LoveSexTravelMusik: Stories for the EasyJet Generation (Freight, 2013)

Select short stories

"We're All Gonna Have the Blues," in Beacons: Stories for our Not So Distant Future, edited by Gregory Norminton (Oneworld, 2013) 'The Jim Hangovers' in Being Dad: Short Stories on Fatherhood (Tangent, 2016) edited by Dan Coxon 'A Little Light' (2023, audio story, BBC Sounds children's Time for a Story series) 'The Magic of Stories' (2024, audio story, BBC Sounds children's Time for a Story series) 'Return to The Gorbals' in New Writing Scotland 43: A Chaos of Light (ALS, 2025), edited by Kirstin Innes, Chris Powici and Niall O'Gallagher