Sian Hughes (born 1965) is a UK poet, teacher, and novelist.
Hughes grew up in a small village in Cheshire, which served as the setting of her first novel Pearl. [1]
Siân Hughes began writing poetry on an Arvon course in 1994, and in 1996 won the TLS / Poems on the Underground competition with "Secret Lives". In 2006, she won first prize in the Arvon International Poetry Competition with "The Send-Off", an elegy for her third child. [2] In 2009, her collection of poetry, The Missing, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award shortlisted for the Felix Dennis and Aldeburgh prizes, and won the Seamus Heaney Award. [3]
In 2023, her debut novel Pearl was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. [3] Pearl is a retelling of the Pearl Poet's 14th century poem Pearl about grief and loss as a father struggles with the death of his daughter. The novel Pearl tells the grief experienced as the young mother Marianne loses her own mother, with the reader soon learning that the lost pearl in Marianne's recollection of grief, and her anguish, reaches yet further back to an earlier loss. Writing for The Guardian , Barney Norris commended Hughes for being able to portray the permanence of grief, stating: "Marianne is a woman whose body has kept ageing, but whose heart and mind are trapped in the moment she lost her mother. The way trauma cuts one off from the world and isolates the sufferer in the moment that hurt them is brilliantly rendered here." [4]
Siân Hughes lives in Cheshire with her son, where she owns and runs the independent bookshop Magpie Books. [5]
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honor posthumously.
Sir Andrew Motion is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. In 2012, he became President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking over from Bill Bryson.
Anne Michaels is a Canadian poet and novelist whose work has been translated and published in over 45 countries. Her books have garnered dozens of international awards including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. She is the recipient of honorary degrees, the Guggenheim Fellowship and many other honours. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice shortlisted for the Giller Prize and twice long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award. Michaels won a 2019 Vine Award for Infinite Gradation, her first volume of non-fiction. Michaels was the poet laureate of Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 2016 to 2019, and she is perhaps best known for her novel Fugitive Pieces, which was adapted for the screen in 2007.
Graham Colin Swift FRSL is a British writer. Born in London, UK, he was educated at Dulwich College, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York.
Helen Dunmore FRSL was a British poet, novelist, and short story and children's writer.
Michael Crummey is a Canadian poet and a writer of historical fiction. His writing often draws on the history and landscape of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.
Fiona Ruth Sampson, Born 1963 is a British poet, writer, editor, translator and academic who was the first woman editor of Poetry Review since Muriel Spark. She received a MBE for services to literature in 2017.
Sarah Hall is an English novelist and short story writer. Her critically acclaimed second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was nominated for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. She lives in Cumbria.
Georgia Frances Elise Blain was an Australian novelist, journalist and biographer.
Samantha Harvey is an English novelist. She is the author of several critically acclaimed novels and has been shortlisted for various literary prizes.
Elaine Feeney is an Irish poet, novelist, and playwright. Her writing focuses on "the central themes of history, national identity, and state institutions, and she examines how these forces structure the everyday lives of Irish women". A former slam poetry winner, she has been described as "an experienced writer who has been wrestling with poetry on page and on stage since 2006" and in 2015 was heralded as "one of the most provocative poets to come out of Ireland in the last decade". Her work has been widely translated.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Anna Smaill is a New Zealand poet and novelist, and a former violinist.
Audrey Magee is an Irish novelist and journalist. Her debut novel, The Undertaking, was nominated for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2014. Her novel The Colony was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a Nigerian writer. Her 2017 debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in 2017.
Yewande Omotoso is a South African-based novelist, architect and designer, who was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria. She currently lives in Johannesburg. Her two published novels have earned her considerable attention, including winning the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author, being shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the M-Net Literary Awards 2012, and the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and being longlisted for the 2017 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. She is the daughter of Nigerian writer Kole Omotoso, and the sister of filmmaker Akin Omotoso.
Emma Neale is a novelist and poet from New Zealand.
Lost Children Archive is a 2019 novel by writer Valeria Luiselli. Luiselli was in part inspired by the ongoing American policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican-American border. The novel is the first book Luiselli wrote in English.
Lisa Allen-Agostini is a Trinidadian journalist, editor and writer of fiction, poetry and drama. She is also a stand-up comedian, performing as "Just Lisa".