Ewan Morrison
Novelist, Radio/tv/screenwriter, Essayist
About
Ewan Morrison is a multi-award-winning novelist, scriptwriter and essayist. His writing is inspired by his experiences within several ‘alternative lifestyle experiments’, and through his widely known essays and articles he explores questions around purpose and ‘the meaning crisis’ in modern society. His fiction is focused on the modern family, cults, idealism and extremism.
His new novel, For Emma (Leamington Books, 2025) has been hailed as ‘a masterpiece’ by Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) and has received praise and endorsements from Terry Gilliam, Atom Egoyan and John Banville, among others.
Morrison’s survivalist novel How to Survive Everything (Contraband, Harper Perennial, 2021/2022) is being developed as a TV series with production company Made Up Stories (Nine Perfect Strangers, The Lost Flowers of Alice Heart), Kindling Pictures (Safe Home, Fake) and Fifth Season (Severance, Scenes from a Marriage) with scriptwriter Tom Butterworth (Britannica, Tin Star, Fortitude). Morrison is currently writing the sequel to the novel, in what will be a trilogy. Part two is titled: Thanks for Everything.
Morrison’s novel Nina X (Little, Brown/Hachette, 2019) is being adapted as a feature film with David Mackenzie, the director of the Academy Award-nominated film Hell or High Water (2016), with Morrison as scriptwriter. Nina X won Scotland’s leading literary prize, the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year, in 2021.
His novel, Close Your Eyes (Jonathan Cape, Penguin Random House, 2012) won the SMIT Fiction prize and earned Ewan the Glenfiddich Scottish Writer of the Year award (2013). The feature length ‘TV event’ American Blackout (National Geographic, 2014), co-written by Morrison and partner Emily Ballou, reached an audience of 45 million and was debated in the U.S Senate. It has a cult following among ‘Preppers’ and ‘Survivalists’.
Morrison’s feature film Swung (Sigma Films, 2016), an adaptation of his first novel, Swung (Jonathan Cape, Penguin Random House, 2007), was nominated for two BAFTAs and one international award. The novel was also shortlisted for the Prix Le Prince Maurice (Mauritius) and led to Morrison being a finalist in the Arena magazine Man of the Year award (literature) 2006.
Morrison is the winner of a Royal Television Society award for best regional drama (2001) and has been nominated for four BAFTAs. He lives in Argyll and Bute, Scotland and works in Glasgow.