Avery Mathers is a self-unemployed writer living in the Highlands. He keeps bees but writes contemporary and historically-set fiction for adult humans, often with a crime slant and sometimes with humour. His themes centre around identity, confusion, misunderstanding and madness.

 

Avery is a serial non-finisher of novels but his short stories and flash fiction have been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Reflex Fiction, Friday Flash Fiction, Every Day Fiction, Close to the Bone, 101-Words, 50-Word Stories, 50 Give or Take, 11Mag Berlin, Fairytalez and others. Triclops, an anthology of short stories written in conjunction with Susan Howe and Lee Williams, was published in 2011 and is long-since unavailable. Due to the mysteries of booksellers' algorithms, a copy was once offered online for four hundred dollars. We’re worth it.

 

In past lives, Avery was a police officer and a Pilates instructor – not at the same time. The transition from police officer to fiction writer was a logical progression.

 

Born of an Aberdeenshire family, his native language was Doric but he’s now bilingual. He emigrated to the Highlands in 2014 as a reward to his Invernesian wife for having accidentally stayed in Aberdeen for forty years.

 

Avery has an MA in Psychology with English Literature and an MLitt in Creative Writing, but thinks that fiction writing is best learned on-the-job.

 

His favourite word is ‘puddle’.