Suhayl Saadi was born in East Yorkshire in 1961, but moved to Glasgow in 1965. He studied medicine at Glasgow University, and was working as a GP when his first novel was published in 1997. The Snake was an erotic novel written under the pseudonym ‘Melanie Desmoulins’, but Saadi had been writing articles, stories and poems ever since joining a writer’s group in the late 1980s.

Now writing novels, stage and radio plays, as well as newspaper articles and song lyrics, Saadi is also the editor of a number of anthologies, including Macallan Shorts 5 (2002) (Saadi won second prize in the Macallan Shorts competition in 1999).

His first short story collection The Burning Mirror was published by Polygon in 2001, and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Prize.