Siân Hughes

Last updated

Sian Hughes born 1965 is a UK poet, teacher, and novelist.

Contents

Biography

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]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Plath</span> American poet and writer (1932–1963)

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 two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), and also 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 The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works.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 honour posthumously.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Motion</span> English poet and writer (born 1952)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Michaels</span> Canadian poet and novelist (born 1958)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graham Swift</span> English writer (born 1949)

Graham Colin Swift FRSL is an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Dunmore</span> British writer

Helen Dunmore FRSL was a British poet, novelist, and short story and children's writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Crummey</span> Canadian poet and 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lavinia Greenlaw</span> English poet and novelist (born 1962)

Lavinia Elaine Greenlaw is an English poet, novelist and non-fiction writer. She won the Prix du Premier Roman with her first novel and her poetry has been shortlisted for awards that include the T. S. Eliot Prize, Forward Prize and Whitbread Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Poetry Award for A Double Sorrow: A Version of Troilus and Criseyde. Greenlaw currently holds the post of Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samantha Harvey (author)</span> English writer

Samantha Harvey is an English novelist. She is the author of several critically acclaimed novels and has been shortlisted for various literary prizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elaine Feeney</span> Irish writer

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick McGuinness</span> British academic, critic, novelist, and poet

Patrick McGuinness FRSL FLSW is a British academic, critic, novelist, and poet. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford, where he is Fellow and Tutor at St Anne's College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leone Ross</span> British writer (born 1969)

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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Neale</span> New Zealand novelist and poet

Emma Neale is a novelist and poet from New Zealand.

<i>Lost Children Archive</i> 2019 novel by Valeria Luiselli

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.

<i>Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead</i> 2009 crime novel by Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a 2009 mystery novel by Olga Tokarczuk. Originally published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Literackie, it was later translated to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and published in 2018 by the British independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions. The book received a wider release in 2019 when it was published in the United States by Riverhead Books on 13 August 2019. A portion of the English translation was originally published in literary magazine Granta in 2017.

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".

References

  1. ↑ Gill, Sarah (5 July 2023). "Debut novelist Sian Hughes on writing her way through grief, confusion and motherhood". IMAGE.ie.
  2. ↑ "Siân Hughes | The Guardian". the Guardian. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
  3. 1 2 "Siân Hughes The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. 24 September 1965.
  4. ↑ Norris, Barney (25 August 2023). "Pearl by Siân Hughes review – a circling story of memory and loss". The Guardian.
  5. ↑ "Siân Hughes". The Indigo Press. 4 September 2022. Retrieved 9 January 2024.
  6. ↑ "The Missing". Salt.
  7. ↑ "Pearl by Siân Hughes: 9780593802564 PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.