William Hershaw

William Hershaw (born Newport On Tay, Fife, 19 March 1957) is a Scottish poet, playwright, musician and Scots language activist.

Hershaw's first major collection of poetry, The Cowdenbeath Man, Scottish Cultural Press, 1998, was a series of elegies about the decline of the coal mining industry in Central Fife. He won the Callum MacDonald Award for Winter Song in 2005, and The McCash Prize for Scots Poetry in 2011.

In 2012, he revived The Bowhill Players (originally a drama company founded by playwright Joe Corrie during the General Strike of 1926) as a musical ensemble, performing at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe and creating new musical settings for Corrie's poetry.

In 2016, Grace Note published his Scots version of The Tempest and Michael, a ballad play about the medieval polymath Michael Scot of Balwearie. An audio recording of Michael was released under the Scotsoun label in 2021, performed by the Bowhill Players.

The Sair Road, published in 2018, is Hershaw's Scot's Language version of the Stations of the Cross set during the 1984 Miners' strike. This is a collection of poems illustrated by artist Les McConnell.

In 2020, Hershaw was runner up in the Scots poetry competition at the Wigtown Book Festival.

Further collaboration with McConnell produced Earth Bound Companions and Saul Vaigers - A Scottish Saints Calendar, both published in 2021.

William Hershaw is a member of the editorial board of the Scots Language Society.