Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight works of fiction have earned him many awards and honours around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature (2017) and the Booker Prize (1989). His work has been translated into over fifty languages. The Remains of…
Steve Jones, FRS is a geneticist, regular columnist for the Daily Telegraph and award-winning author of books on the subject of evolution, such as The Language of the Genes. In 1996 he was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize, and in 2011 became President of The Association for Science Education.
Mark Le Fanu qualified as a solicitor after a short career in the Navy and served on the SoA’s staff as General Secretary from 1982 to 2011.
Penelope Lively, DBE, FRSL has written fiction for both children and adults. She won the Booker Prize with her novel Moon Tiger and the Carnegie Medal with The Ghost of Thomas Kempe. She has also been shortlisted for the Costa Prize and has won the Whitbread Award. She is a Fellow of the RSL, served for six years on…
Ian McEwan, CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a novelist and screenwriter whose work has been awarded the SoA’s Somerset Maugham Award, Whitbread Novel Award and been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize six times. In 1998 he won the Booker prize for his novel Amsterdam. In 2000 he was appointed CBE.
Roger McGough, CBE, FRSL is a poet, broadcaster, children’s author and playwright, winning critical acclaim for his 1967 anthology The Mersey Sound. He has won the SoA’s Cholmondeley Award and was appointed OBE in 1997 and CBE in 2004. He presents BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. He is a Fellow of the RSL and President of the Poetry…
Andrew Motion FRSL is a poet, novelist and biographer, and co-founder and co-director of the Poetry Archive. He was the UK’s Poet Laureate between 1999 and 2009, and in 2009 was knighted for his services to poetry. He has been President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and Chair of the Booker Prize. He now…
Ben Okri is a poet, novelist, and playwright. He has published many books including The Famished Road, which won the Booker Prize in 1991, The Age of Magic, Dangerous Love, In Arcadia, and Astonishing the Gods. He has published ten novels, three books of short stories, two collections of essays, and three volumes of poems, the latest being Wild. His works…
Ian Rankin, OBE, DL, FRSE is a crime writer whose Inspector Rebus novels have been adapted as a television series. He has won many awards for his writing including the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger Award, Specsavers National Book Award for Outstanding Achievement and Edgar Award for best novel. In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the…
Piers Paul Read, FRSL, is a novelist, biographer and historian. During his career he has won the SoA’s Somerset Maugham Award for his novel Monk Dawson, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his book A Season in the West, and had his novels adapted for television and film. Alive. The Story of the Andes Survivors was his…
Gillian Reynolds, MBE is a radio critic, journalist and broadcaster. She has been a radio critic at the Daily Telegraph since 1975 and previously held the same post at the Guardian. She is also a Fellow of The Radio Academy and the Royal Television Society and was awarded her MBE in 1999.
J.K. Rowling, OBE, FRSL is a novelist, screenwriter and author of the Harry Potter series which has sold over 450 million copies, are distributed in more than 200 territories and translated into 79 languages. She has written four books since, including The Casual Vacancy, her first novel for adults and, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo’s Calling, The…
