attended Aberdeen High School for Girls and graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1915, subsequently lecturing for the Aberdeen College of Education.

After she retired in 1956 she edited the Aberdeen University review. She was a friend and supporter of other Scottish writers including Neil M. Gunn and Jessie Kesson.

She died in Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen.

Her modernist novels portray the restricted and often tragic lives of women in contemporary Scotland. She was a keen hill-walker and her poetry expresses her love for the mountainous Grampian landscape.

Nan Shepherd is commemorated in Makars' Court, outside The Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh.

Selections for Makars' Court are made by The Writers' Museum; The Saltire Society; The Scottish Poetry Library.

Novels

• The Quarry Wood (1928)
• The Weatherhouse (1930)
• A Pass in the Grampians (1933)

Poetry

• In the Cairngorms (1934)

Nonfiction

• The Living Mountain (published 1977, written in the 1940s).