Professor Kirsty Gunn

Kirsty Gunn, BA (Hons), M.Phil., educated at Victoria University and Oxford, is the author of six novels - Rain, The Keepsake, Featherstone, The Boy and the Sea, The Big Music and Caroline's Bikini - extended essays and short stories about identity and Katherine Mansfield - Thorndon, My Katherine Mansfield Project and  Going Bush - as well as two collections of short stories - This Place you Return to is Home and Infidelities- and 44 Things, a collection of essays, fragments and stories. She is the recipient of a number of awards and prizes including the Scottish Arts Council Bursary for Literature, the New York Times Notable Book award, Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year. The Big Music was shortlisted for the James Tait Black and Impact Awards and was a Guardian Book of the Year and winner of the New Zealand Book of the Year and her most recent novel, Caroline's Bikini, is just out in paperback this year. 

Her last collection of short stories, "Infidelities", published in November 2014, was awarded the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2015 and was also shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. She is published by Faber and Faber and internationally, and her work has been made into films, theatre, dance and widely broadcast.

She has previously taught Creative Writing at Oxford University and at a number of writing seminars and schools and now teaches modules in Writing Practice and Study, and directs, with Gail Low, the WritersRead series at Tonic in Dundee. She lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.

Further information about Kirsty is available on her website.