Ewan Morrison
Ewan Morrison is an award-winning novelist, scriptwriter and essayist.
His fiction tends to focus on the subject of the modern family, cults, idealism and extremism.
The film American Blackout (2014), co-written by Morrison and partner Emily Ballou, reached an audience of 45 million and was debated in the U.S Senate. It has a cult following among ‘Preppers’ and ‘Survivalists’.
Morrison's feature film, Swung (2016), an adaptation of his first novel, was nominated for two BAFTAs and one international award.
The novel, was also short-listed for the Le Prince Maurice Award (Mauritius) and led to Morrison being a finalist in the Arena Magazine Man of the Year Award (literature) 2006.
Morrison’s novel Nina X (2019) is being adapted as a feature film with the director of an Academy Award nominated film, with Morrison as scriptwriter. The television rights for the adaptation of Morrison’s book How to Survive Everything (2021) have been acquired by Made Up Stories and Endeavor and development has recently commenced. Morrison is the winner of a Royal Television Society Award for best drama (2001) and has been nominated for four BAFTAs.
Ewan Morrison on x.com ― @mrewanmorrison
Recent Press for Ewan's novel For Emma.
For Emma is the story of a girl who wants to discover the meaning of life, andso she takes part in an AI brain-chip experiment.
Inspired by the real-life Brain Chip Implant experiments (Musk/Neuralink) and the technogothic tradition (Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Island of Dr Moreau), For Emma is a tale of possession by a new force unleashed by science. It is a warning for the future but also an intimate, heart-breaking study of the love between a father and daughter and of the madness that grief can drive us to.
huckmag.com
Ewan Morrison Talks to Irvine Welsh about For Emma, described as "a troubling but utterly human dive headfirst into the big issues of our age; the corporate techno state ruled by oligarchs and fuelled by big capital, the power of algorithmic suggestion, the advance of artificial intelligence, the compromising of the human spirit and the decline of freedom and equality, the impotence of opposition, the end of the state as a redistributive force and enhancement of it as a punitive one with its increasingly brutal war on its citizenry, culminating in the inevitability and futility of terrorism.
"So yes, a ton of dystopia to consider."
Scots Whay Hae! Podcast
What's The Story? Mourning Glory: The Scots Whay Hae! Podcast Talks To Ewan Morrison
Ewan gives an overview of the novel before talking about Robert Louis Stevenson, his choice of quotations which are the book's epigraph, the structure of the novel, the central characters, and the sense of paranoia which runs throughout.
The two also discuss the central themes which include technology and transhumanism, but also the very human traits of love, regret, addiction, and grief. They also mull over the humour which comes, perhaps unexpectedly, from events rather than the writing itself.
The Times
Ewan Morrison is not only Scotland’s most intriguing writer, he has the eerie gift of prophecy. His last novel, How to Survive Everything, predicted a global pandemic well before Covid-19. It explored the extremes human beings will go to “when there’s no one left to trust”. It shows a family determined to survive against the odds — which includes, by the way, a do-it-yourself amputation.
When lockdown came, Morrison and his wife, Emily, decided to be survivalists. They escaped to a hideaway location in Argyll, taking with them essential supplies and nothing else. It included lots of over-the-counter drugs, beans, pulses and water purifiers. They tried to grow their own crops.
“We failed miserably,” he said. “It’s very hard to grow anything in Scotland
3:AM Magazine
Writing, Raging, and Fatherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Ewan Morrison interviewed by Chris Kelso. 3:AM asks do you think AI is wholly insidious, and Ewan discusses the intensity of parental love, an overarching phantom in For Emma – especially the specific dynamic between a father and a daughter.
Chris Kelso is an award-nominated, multi-translated writer, editor, and illustrator from Scotland.
Glasgow Review of Books
THE JUGGERNAUT CAN BE STOPPED: Ewan Morrison on ‘For Emma’ & Resisting The Rise of Techno-Capital
25 March 2025
A conversation with Scottish literature’s enfant terrible about the themes of his new techno-thriller ‘For Emma‘, beamed to you from a dystopian near-future.
By Bram E. Gieben
Praise for For Emma
“A masterpiece….For Emma is an extraordinary novel; a treatise of love and loss, the terror of the modern world and the sprung, high-tech trap humanity has set for itself. This would be more than enough: awe inspiringly, it’s also a page-turning thriller, and it confirms its author as the eminent fiction writer of our times.”
Irvine Welsh
“Absolutely wonderful…riveting, sad, mad and terrifying.”
Terry Gilliam
“For Emma is as disturbing as it is convincing, a tale of love and guilt and grief, and an apt tract for our chaotic times.”
John Banville
“This book scared me like no horror story ever has, because its monster is right in front of us, right now, eating us slowly while we cheer.”
Isaac Marion. Author Warm Bodies.
“Harrowing, tragic and moving.”
Ian Rankin
“A devastatingly accomplished and cinema-literate nightmare of culture-induced and morally bereft psychotic breakdown: the state in which we are all now registered, observed and disenfranchised. The poetry of paranoia, here, is so compelling, that we are forced to conclude that the very act of tale-telling, authorship, is being dictated by a terrifying otherness. Now read on. Please.”
Iain Sinclair – writer, filmmaker
Ewan Morrison
For Emma is available in UK on Amazon Kindle
Novels and Non-fiction
(2025) For Emma. Leamington. ISBN 9781914090950
(2021) How to Survive Everything. Contraband. ISBN 1913393151
(2019) Nina X. Fleet. ISBN 0708899021
(2012) Close Your Eyes. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224096230
(2012) Tales from the Mall. Cargo. ISBN 0956308376
(2009) Ménage. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224084402
(2008) Distance. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 022408237X
(2007) Swung. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 9780224078764
(2005). The Last Book You Read and Other Stories. Chroma. ISBN 1845020480 (short story collection)
Film & Television
Closet (1994), director[13]
Blue Christmas (1994), director[13][76]
The Contract (1995), director and screenplay[13][77]
The Proposal (1998), director and producer[78]
I Saw You (2000), director[14][79]
The Lovers (2000), director[80][81]
American Blackout (2013), screenplay co-written with Emily Ballou[75]
Swung (Sigma Films, 2015), screenplay[51][82]
None of the Above (2018), screenplay[83]