Collections of his paintings are owned by Collins Gallery at Strathclyde University and the People's Palace local history museum, Glasgow Green. In 1977 he was Glasgow's official Artist-Recorder for the People's Palace local history museum, and from 1977 to 1979 was Writer in Residence at Glasgow University. He has also written for stage, radio and television, and between 19 had 17 TV and radio plays broadcast, as well as five further plays produced for the theatre, including Working Legs: A Play for Those Without Them (1997) and Fleck (2008). His collections of short stories include Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983), winner of the 1983 Cheltenham Prize, and Ten Tales Tall and True (1993), and he is the editor of The Book of Prefaces (2000). Poor Things (1992), winner of the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, takes the form of a series of historical documents. His other fiction includes 1982 Janine (1984), the tale of Jock McLeish, a depressed and divorced Scottish electrician The Fall of Kelvin Walker: A Fable of the Sixties (1985), adapted by Gray from his own television script, the story of a young Scotsman who moves to London in the 1960s and becomes involved with the media world Something Leather (1990), several short narratives exploring female sexuality and McGrotty and Ludmilla (1990). A complex and at times surreal mix of fantasy, autobiography and social realism, the book provides a vision of contemporary society through the story of art student Duncan Thaw.

It won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Scottish Book of the Year award. His highly-acclaimed first novel Lanark was published in 1981. Later he wrote fiction, illustrating many of his own books. He worked as a part-time art teacher, muralist and theatrical scene painter before becoming a full-time painter and playwright. He was born in Riddrie, Glasgow, on 28 December 1934, and trained as a painter at the Glasgow School of Art. Alasdair Gray describes himself as a 'self-employed verbal and pictorial artist'.

Novel by alasdair gray