Scottish poet, novelist, playwright and scriptwriter Janet Paisley, who "wrote in Scots and English and was a life-long activist for social justice and the Scots language," died November 9, the Herald reported. She was 70. Paisley's books include six poetry collections, two award-winning works of fiction, 11 plays for theatre and radio, and seven radio history drama series. She edited the annual anthology New Writing Scotland for the Association for Scottish Literary Studies and coordinated the first Scottish PEN Women Writers Committee.
In addition to the novels White Rose Rebel and Warrior Daughter, her books include the poetry collections Pegasus in Flight, Alien Crop, Reading the Bones, Ye Cannae Win and Sang fur the Wandert, her last book of poems, which was completed after a serious stroke in 2010, published in 2014 and "is a major achievement," the Herald noted.
In a tribute, Alan Raich wrote that Paisley "will be remembered with love, admiration and affection, as a writer, mother, grandmother, colleague and friend. She was active and enabling, a catalyst and an example, in every good sense those words convey."