Mary Johnston is a writer and poet who lives in Midlothian. She grew up in the North East and moved south to begin a career in teaching. After she retired, with family grown and a desire to do something to help preserve the Scots language she began writing poetry and short stories. Motivation to keep writing grew as she found her work was being published and she won prizes. Here we have two extracts from a conversation Mary had with the centre's Director Michael Hance, where they talk about starting to write and writing in the Scots language. The second part is a discussion about whether to use words from the writers own area only, or whether to create a standard or 'synthetic' Scots by using words from all areas.

Mary talks about Scots

Mary talks about her work