Irvine Welsh was born in Edinburgh in 1958. His first novel, TRAINSPOTTING (1993), a blackly comic portrait of a group of young heroin users living in Edinburgh in the 1980s, was adapted as a film directed by Danny Boyle, starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle, in 1996. THE ACID HOUSE, a collection of short stories, was published in 1994 and was followed by Welsh's second novel, MARABOU STORK NIGHTMARES (1995). ECSTASY: THREE TALES OF CHEMICAL ROMANCE, a collection of three novellas, was published in 1996, and a third novel, FILTH, a vivid account of the violent adventures of a bigoted, racist and corrupt Scottish policeman, was published in 1998. GLUE (2001), is the story of four boys growing up in an Edinburgh housing estate. PORNO, a sequel to TRAINSPOTTING, was published in 2002. Welsh is also the author of the plays, HEADSTATE (1994) AND YOU'LL HAVE HAD YOUR HOLE (1998). 4 PLAY, an omnibus edition of four stage adaptations of Welsh's fiction by Harry Gibson and Keith Wyatt, was published in 2001. His screenplay of THE ACID HOUSE was directed for Channel 4 Films by Paul McGuigan (1998).
