She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge . She studied at the University of Aberdeen , and then at Cambridge, for a PhD. that was never finished.University of Strathclyde until she fell ill with chronic fatigue syndrome .Following this she became a full-time writerThe Guardian , The Scotsman , and the Times Literary Supplement . Openly gay, she lives in Cambridge with her partner Sarah Wood.
In 2007 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature  
In 2009, she donated the short story Last (previously published in the Manchester Review Online) to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales ' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the 'Fire' collection.

Short story collections

• Free Love and Other Stories (1995), awarded the Saltire First Book of the Year award .


• Other Stories and Other Stories (1999)


• The Whole Story and Other Stories (2003)


• The First Person and Other Stories (2008)

Novels

• Like (1997)^[2]


• Hotel World (2001), awarded the Encore Award , a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the inaugural Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.^[2] The novel was adapted to the stage by Kidbrooke secondary school and was performed at the Greenwich Theatre and the 2007Edinburgh Festival Fringe .^{[9] [10]}


• The Accidental (2005), shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize , the Orange Prize for Fiction , and won the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year award


• Girl Meets Boy (2007), winner of Diva magazine readers’ choice Book of the Year , Sundial Scottish Arts Council Novel of the Year.

Plays

• The Seer (2006)


• Just

Other projects