Kirsty Strickland is a columnist and commentator who writes for The National, CommonSpace and the Independent. She has appeared on radio and television to talk about feminism and politics, and appeared on BBC Scotland’s 2017 election night coverage.

Her key interests are women’s rights, violence against women and the representation of women in politics and women in the media. She wrote a blog for Women For Independence on gender balance in current affairs programmes, and regularly writes and campaigns on the subject.

Kirsty’s writing career kicked off in 2015, when she won the Write To End Violence Against Women Awards bursary. Through this she wrote a series of columns for The National in the run up to the awards, and continued to do so once the awards had passed. In 2016, she attended the awards again, this time as a judge, and delivered a speech highlighting the erasure of women who’ve been killed by men in the media coverage of their deaths.

Kirsty is writing her first novel, alongside her freelance writing and political commentary. In her spare time, she likes to read, cook and write children’s stories.