George Mackay Brown was the youngest of six children, born to John Brown, a tailor and postman, and Mhairi Mackay, who had been brought up in Braal, Strathy, Sutherland as a native Gaelic speaker. He was born on the 17th of October 1921. Except for spells as a mature student in mainland Scotland, Mackay Brown lived all of his life in Stromness in the Orkney Islands. Due to illness his father was restricted in his work and received no pension. His uncle Jimmy Brown’s body was found in Stromness harbour in 1935, probably because of suicide; there was a family history of depression.

His youth was marked by poverty and it was from this time that he was affected by tuberculosis. This illness kept him from entering the army at the start of World War II and it afflicted him to such an extent that he could not live a normal working life; however, it was because of this that he had the time and space in which to write. In 1947, Stromness voted to allow pubs to open again, the town having been 'dry' since the 1920s. When the first bar opened in 1948 Mackay Brown first tasted alcohol, which he found to be "a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself 'If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness'". Subsequently alcohol played a considerable part in his life, although he says, "I never became an alcoholic, mainly because my guts quickly staled".

He was a mature student at Newbattle Abbey College, where the poet Edwin Muir, who would have a great influence on his life as a writer, was warden in the 1951-1952 session. His return for the following session was interrupted by the return of tuberculosis.

Having had poems published in several periodicals, his first volume of poems, The Storm, was published by the Orkney Press in 1954. Edwin Muir wrote in the forward: "Grace is what I find in these poems". Only three hundred copies were printed, and the imprint sold out within a fortnight. It was acclaimed in the local press.

He studied English literature at the University of Edinburgh and did post-graduate study on Gerard Manley Hopkins . After publication of poems in a literary magazine, with the help of Edwin Muir, Brown had a second volume Loaves and Fishes published by the Hogarth Press in 1959. It was warmly received.

During this period he met, and drank in Rose Street, Edinburgh with, many of the Scottish poets of his time: Sydney Goodsir Smith, Norman MacCaig, Hugh MacDiarmid and others. Here he also met Stella Cartwright, described as "The Muse in Rose Street". Brown was briefly engaged to her, and began a correspondence that would continue till her death in 1985.

He died on 13 April 1996 . His gravestone bears an inscription from the last two lines of his 1996 poem A work for poets : "Carve the runes / Then be content with silence".

The whole poem runs:

To have carved on the days of our vanity

A sun

A ship

A star

A cornstalk

Also a few marks

From an ancient forgotten time

A child may read

That not far from the stone

A well might open for wayfarers

Here is a work for poets-

Carve the runes

Then be content with silence

Mackay Brown gained most of his inspiration from his native islands, in poems, stories and novels which ranged through time. He drew on the Icelandic Orkneyinga Saga, especially in his novel Magnus. In 1961, he entered the Roman Catholic Church; he drew much inspiration from the traditional Latin liturgy, monasticism and the history of the medieval Church in Orkney.

He was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1994 for his Beside the Ocean of Time and won the 1987 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for "The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories". His autobiography, For the Islands I Sing, was published shortly after his death. A biography George Mackay Brown: The Life by Maggie Fergusson was published in 2006.

Composer Peter Maxwell Davies collaborated with Mackay Brown for many of his Orkney-inspired works.

Poetry

• The Storm (1954)
• Loaves and Fishes (1959)
• The Year of the Whale (1965)
• Fishermen with Ploughs (1971)
• Poems New and Selected (1971)
• Winterfold (1976)
• Voyages (1983)
• The Wreck of the Archangel (1989)
• Tryst on Egilsay (1989)
• Brodgar Poems (1992)
• Foresterhill (1992)
• Following a Lark (1996)
• Water (1996)
• Travellers (2001)
• Collected Poems (2005)
• The Unlucky Boat (?)

Short stories

• A Calendar of Love (1967)
• A Time to Keep (1969)
• Hawkfall (1974)
• The Sun's Net (1976)
• Andrina and Other Stories (1983)
• The Masked Fisherman and Other Stories (1989)
• The Sea-King's Daughter (1991)
• Winter Tales (1995)
• The Island of the Women and Other Stories (1998)

Plays

• A Spell for Green Corn (1970)
• Three Plays: The Loom of Light, The Well and The Voyage of Saint Brandon (1984)

Novels

• Greenvoe (1972)
• Magnus (1973)
• Time in a Red Coat (1984)
• The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories (1987) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
• Vinland (1992)
• Beside the Ocean of Time (1994) shortlisted for Booker Prize and judged Scottish Book of the Year by the Saltire Society

Essays and Autobiography

• An Orkney Tapestry (1969)
• Letters from Hamnavoe (1975)
• Under Brinkie's Brae (1979)
• Portrait of Orkney (1981)
• Rockpools and Daffodils: An Orcadian Diary, 1979-91 (1992)
• For the Islands I Sing: An Autobiography (1997)
• Stained Glass Windows (1998)
• Northern Lights (1999) (Includes Poetry)
• The First Wash of Spring (2006)

Children's Stories

• The Two Fiddlers (1974)
• Pictures in the Cave (1977)
• Six Lives of Fankle the Cat (1980)