Aurochs and Auks: Essays on life, loss and renewal

Author Biography

John Burnside is a poet and novelist who was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. He attended Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, where he studied English and European languages. A computer analyst and software engineer for many years, Burnside began publishing poetry in the 1980s. His collections of poetry include The Hoop (1988); Common Knowledge (1991), which won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award; Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; The Asylum Dance (2000), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize; The Light Trap (2002); The Good Neighbour (2005); Gift Songs (2007); The Hunt in the Forest (2009); and Black Cat Bone (2011), which won both the Forward Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2008, Burnside received the Cholmondeley Award. Burnside's prose works include the collection of short stories Burning Elvis (2000), several novels including the novella Havergey, and two memoirs. The Devil's Footprints (2007) was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and A Summer of Drowning (2011) was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. A former writer-in-residence at Dundee University, Burnside currently teaches at the University of St. Andrews.