Christopher Rush was born in 1944 in St Monans, a fishing village in the East Neuk of Fife. He was educated there and at Waid Academy in Anstruther, before going on to read English at the University of Aberdeen. There he excelled as a scholar and was an English Medal winner. He has since won five Scottish Arts Council Bursaries, two SAC Book Awards and was short-listed for the McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Between 1969 and 1999 he taught English at George Watson's College, Edinburgh.
A Twelvemonth and a Day was first published in 1985 and is a semi-autobiographical account of the first twelve years of a boy's life, about the golden days before experience imposes itself and limits exploration of the world. In 2005 it was chosen by The List magazine as one of the 100 Best Scottish Books of All Time. It has also been made into a highly successful film, Venus Peter (1988), for which Rush co-wrote the screenplay.
Rush's many other publications include a poetry collection, A Resurrection of a Kind (1984), two short story collections, Peace Comes Dropping Slow (1983) and Into the Ebb (1989), two novels, Last Lesson of the Afternoon (1994), Will (2007), a children's book, Venus Peter Saves the Whale (1992), and two volumes of memoirs, To Travel Hopefully: Journal of a Death Not Foretold (2005) and Hellfire and Herring (2007). He is currently working on his third novel, Penelope's Web: Odysseus Unravelled.