The Novellas: The Quarry

Launched at the Word Festival,
The Quarry (Lochlands, 2007) is a novella in Scots. In four parts, it centres on a granite quarry in the town of Meikleburgh spanning the years 2010 to 3000. A short story 'The Yalla Idol' also features in the book.

Sheena dedicated the novella to the late Sir Cyril Lucas, the Director of Fisheries Research for Scotland based at the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen. She writes, "For over forty years he was my parents' next door neighbour. After the bells rang in each Hogmanay, he would first foot us. As a sleepy child struggling to stay awake to greet the New Year, I remember a conversation he once had with my father on the subject of the Future... Dr Lucas argued convincingly that cities would eventually be built under the sea to conserve land."

The Poems: On Brigid's Day

On Brigid's Day (Malfranteaux, 2007) contains a number of poems written while Sheena was a Creative Writing Tutor at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen in Spring 2007.

'The Herdboy' is included in Poppy Fields 2007 (Poetry Now), while others have been published in Pushing Out the Boat. 'The Deliverance Sang' was performed at the Deliberately Thirsty Fringe Event at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival.

'An Auld Sang/A New Sang' was written specifically to work with children during workshops for primary schools at Aberdeen's Central Library to mark the 300th anniversary of the Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707. The workshops were part of the A Union for a' that Schools Education Project.

Also included is 'A Mearns Laddie's Spikk: in memoriam James Leslie Mitchell', a cornkister set to the tune of Drumdelgie, which commemorates the life and achievement of the writer, more familiar to many as Lewis Grassic Gibbon. It was performed at the Grassic Gibbon Centre on 31 March 2007 for his daughter, Rhea Martin, at the Friends of the Centre’s Annual Supper.