|
 |
|
WHAT WOULD DICKENS WRITE TODAY? |
|
 |
|
John Burnside, poet and novelist, was born in Dunfermline, Scotland and studied English and European Languages at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts & Technology (now Anglia Ruskin University).
A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996. He was formerly Writer in Residence at the University of Dundee and The British Library and currently teaches at the University of St Andrews.
His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
His latest collections of poetry are Gift Songs (2007), shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and The Hunt in the Forest (2009).
His novels include The Dumb House (1997), The Mercy Boys (1999) and The Locust Room (2001), set in Cambridge in 1975, it explores the consequences of a series of violent rapes.
His novel Living Nowhere (2003) is a powerful and violent story of friendship and loss.
His latest novel is A Summer of Drowning (2011), a suspense mystery narrated by a teenage girl.
Burnside is also the author of a collection of short stories, Burning Elvis (2000), and has recently published the memoirs A Lie About My Father (2006), and its sequel Waking Up in Toytown (2010), which was shortlisted for the 2011 PEN/Ackerley Prize.
Selected reviews
Critical Perspective: literature.britishcouncil.org
On “A Summer of Drowning”: www.independent.co.uk
On “Black Cat Bone”: www.independent.co.uk
On “A Lie about my Father”:www.guardian.co.uk
|
|
Dickens 2012 digital 
