After a peripatetic childhood in Glasgow, Paris, London, Invergordon, Bergen and Perth, Denise Mina left school early. Working in a number of dead end jobs, all of them badly, before studying at night school to get into Glasgow University Law School. 

Denise went on to study for a PhD at Strathclyde, misusing her student grant to write her first novel. This was Garnethill, published in 1998, which won the Crime Writers Association John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel.

She has now published 14 novels and also writes short stories, plays and graphic novels.

In 2014 she was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame.

Denise presents TV and radio programmes as well as regularly appearing in the media, and has made a film about her own family.

She regularly appears at literary festivals in the UK and abroad, leads masterclasses on writing and was a judge for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction 2014.

Judge for the Cohen Prize in 2017.

Awards

Conviction

  • MacIlvanny Prize for Scottish Crime Novel 2019 (shared prize)

Long Drop

  • MacIlvanny Prize 2017 for Scottish Crime Novel of the year

  • The Gordon Burn Prize 2017 for the 'non-fiction novel'

  • Short listed for CWA Historical Fiction Dagger 

Nemo Me Impune:

  • (Short story in Bloody Scotland Collection) won the CWA Short Story Dagger.

Two of Denise’s novels have won the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award, in consecutive years.

Gods and Beasts

The End of the Wasp Season

A Sickness in the Family

The Dead Hour

Helena and the Babies

Garnethill