Surprise Confession at Edinburgh Book Festival

Scottish book lovers received a shock when they showed up to hear the acclaimed (and famously reclusive) author Candia McWilliam speak. Instead of talking about her prize-winning novels or her writing process, she spoke of her secret life-long battle with alcoholism. She described "chucking up blood," and drinking from disinfectant bottles, in a downward spiral that eventually led her to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. Now sober, McWilliam, the winner of the 1994 Guardian Fiction Prize, read a poem she wrote called A False Quantityabout her drinking and hiding it, to the audience. Described as a "connoisseur of unease," McWilliam's fiction combines razor sharp poetic descriptions and classic suspense with plots about lives unravelling. The Scotsman reports.