Ailsa Ross writes about people, place, and art for Outside, the Guardian, the BBC, Longreads, National Geographic Traveler, JSTOR Daily, ARTnews, Orion, and the Writers’ Union of Canada. Her work’s been syndicated by Cambridge University Press.

Her first novel, Hovel, will be published by Strange Light / Penguin Random House in March 2026. It’s about the lengths we go to for connection when we’re alone, and the conclusions one can only reach when there’s too much time on one’s hands and it’s too cold to go outside.

In 2019, with the Writers’ Trust of Canada, she was the writer-in-residence at Berton House in the Yukon. In 2022, she was an artist-in-residence in Jasper National Park.

In 2018 she was a Banff Centre resident of the Mountain and Wilderness Writing program under the Carlyle Norman Scholarship. Her research and creative writing has also been supported by the British Council, Orion Environmental Writers Workshop in Arizona, NES Artist Residency in Iceland, Outlandia in Scotland, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Ailsa grew up in the north of Scotland. She lives in the Canadian Badlands.

Ailsa is represented by Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists.

Ailsa also has a newsletter. It’s called Holy Fools. So far she’s written about gum disease. In the future she will write about hedgehog skin belts.

Photo at the top: Schae Photography