Day 1 - Mary

Our annual Story Shop showcase presents new and emerging Edinburgh writers to audiences at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Every day of the festival, that's 17 in total, at 4pm in the Guardian Spiegeltent, a writer reads a story of compact beauty, for free. Story Shop is now in its fifth year, and we've got a stellar line up for each day of the festival 2012.

We got off to a tremendous start on Saturday, with 'The Trams' by Mary Mowat. Here's Mary in action, in this snap by official festival photographer Chris Scott. If you missed out, you can read Mary's story here.

Here's a wee interview with Mary.

Which book changed your life?
I don't think it's that easy - they can influence you, but you have to do the hard stuff yourself. Three books among many that made an impact are Absalom, Absalom, by Faulkner; 100 Years of Solitude by Marquez and a book I read at school - Poetry 1900 to 1965, edited by George MacBeth. I love them and think about them a lot.

Which authors, alive or dead would you invite to a dinner party?
I couldn't cope with the dinner party idea, but I would love to talk, separately, to the three listed above and Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Cormac McCarthy.

Who or what is your biggest inspiration as a writer?
The 'what' is the time I have had over the last year as I've studied Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh, and the world around me I want to write about. I am only one year into writing fiction; I've just discovered it really and I realise there's a lot I want to explore. The 'who' would be my dissertation supervisor at the university who has given me great encouragement as I wrote my first long piece of fiction - 'Let Them Have Dominion' - and Remedios and Eric and my family.

If you had to describe Story Shop in just 5 words, what would they be?
A scary but great opportunity.