Award-winning authors join Centre for New Writing

14 Mar 2017

Kamila Shamsie, Will Boast and Honor Gavin come “trailing clouds of glory”

The Centre for New Writing, based within the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, is set to welcome three successful and dynamic new writers to its team in its tenth anniversary year.

Kamila Shamsie is the internationally-renowned author of six novels, including Kartography (2002), Burnt Shadows (2009), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone (2014), which was shortlisted for numerous prizes, including the Baileys Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of the Manchester Literature Festival, and in 2013 was named one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’.

Will Boast was born in England and grew up in Ireland and Wisconsin. His story collection, Power Ballads, won the 2011 Iowa Short Fiction Award, and his New York Times bestselling memoir, Epilogue, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week in 2015; he has also published articles and fiction in Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Scholar and The New York Times.

Honor Gavin takes a multi-platform approach to the creative and the critical, involving music, performance and collaborations with groups such as Theatrum Mundi. She is the author of a monograph on modernist literature and film, and of an exuberant, experimental novel, Midland (2014), which was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.

The centre has also announced the permanent appointment of its Professor of Creative Writing, Jeanette Winterson, whose lively presence has done so much to inspire the students and shape the character of the centre in recent years.

Professor Winterson welcomed the new appointments: “Our new appointments come trailing clouds of glory and garlanded with prizes. We are delighted that they will join us as we work with new students in the coming years.

“The Centre brings together writers who excel in a range of different kinds of fiction, poetry and screenwriting, bringing their individual talents to bear on the work of all of our students.”

Centre co-directors Kaye Mitchell and John McAuliffe added: “2017 marks ten years of the Centre for New Writing, so we’re delighted that The University of Manchester is continuing to invest in creative writing.

“We are organising other new projects and planning on working with many more new bright prospects over the next decade.”