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| Courtesy of H. Fricke |
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Poet and novelist
Prof. John Burnside, of the
School of English, has newly taken up his role as
2013 Eccles British Library Writer in Residence. The prestigious award is sponsored by the
David and Mary Eccles Centre for American Studies at the
British Library. The Centre is home to the foremost collection of American books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers and sound recordings outside of the United States and was set up to promote awareness of the British Library collections relating to the USA and Canada and to help facilitate the use of these collections.
Prof. Burnside will be joined in his residency by acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf.
Prof. Burnside will use the collection to research a novel, which is very loosely a response to Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird, following a brother and sister from their '30s childhood in the South through the volatile ‘60s and the rest of the 'American Century’.
In 2011, Prof. Burnside’s latest poetry collection,
Black Cat Bone, won both the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
