Iain Crichton Smith is a prolific writer in two languages and several genres whose novels and short stories are not as well known as his poetry. He ranks with Derick Thomson and George Mackay Brown at the forefront of the Gaelic Renaissance and is heir apparent to Sorley Maclean's title of elder statesman of Scottish poetry. He is also recognized as a pioneer of the short-story form in Gaelic.

Smith was born on 1 January 1928 on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, in a village where Gaelic was still the native language. In "Writers and Education: Iain Crichton Smith" (1975), an essay about his boyhood in the village of Bayble and his early education in the nearby town of Stornoway, Smith describes how he "squirmed between two worlds, at home in neither," speaking English in school and Gaelic elsewhere. Attempts to bridge the two worlds ultimately propelled Smith...