Alistair Mackay

Alistair Mackay is the author of the novels It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way (2022) and The Child (2024), as well as the short story collection The Lucky Ones (2025). His short fiction has also been published by Commonwealth Writers, New Contrast, Brittle Paper and in the anthologies Queer Africa II, and Queer Africa: Selected Stories. His work explores love and healing, queerness, marginalisation and climate change. He has been long listed for the Sunday Times Literary Awards, and the British Science Fiction Association Awards, and It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way was chosen by Brittle Paper as one of the Notable African Books of 2022. Alistair was born and raised in Johannesburg, has an MA in Politics from Edinburgh University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and lives in Cape Town with his pug.

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Alistair was invited to work on the first volume of the Mirari Queer Classics series. He introduces the contemporary South African reader to Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.