She was a member of the Working Party for a Scottish National Theatre, the SAC Scots Language Synergy, and is on the Cross Party Parliamentary Group for the Scots Language. She has held three Creative Writing Fellowships, received two Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursaries and a Playwright's Bursary, edited New Writing Scotland and co-ordinated the first Scottish PEN Women Writers Committee.

Her first play Refuge won the Peggy Ramsay Award in 1996 . She was awarded a Creative Scotland Award to write Not for Glory (2000), a collection of interlinked short stories in Scots. set in a small village in Central Scotland. Not for Glory was one of the ten Scottish finalists voted for by the public in the 2003 World Book Day 'We are what we read' poll.

The short film Long Haul, written by Paisley, won a Bafta nomination in 2001.

She is the mother of actor David Paisley.