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Alison MacLeod

Novelist, Short-story writer

About

Alison MacLeod is a leading novelist and short story writer, with a particular interest in the porous boundaries between realist accounts (i.e. historical records, memoirs, news reports) and the forces of the human imagination. Her novel Tenderness (Bloomsbury, 2021) explores D. H. Lawrence’s creation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the era-defining events which surrounded its publication. MacLeod’s novel Unexploded (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2013) was longlisted for the Booker Prize, named one of The Observer’s Books of the Year and serialised for BBC Radio 4. All the Beloved Ghosts (Bloomsbury, 2017) was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story prize and Canada’s Governor General’s award for fiction. In 2023-24, MacLeod has been supporting the Ukrainian writing academy, RIBA, with guest lectures to writing students by Zoom. She is in the early stages of planning and editing a collection of new Ukrainian writing in translation in association with RIBA and Jantar Publishing.

MacLeod is an occasional contributor to BBC Radio 4, the Sunday Times and the Guardian, and has appeared at numerous literary festivals in the UK and internationally. For over twenty-five years, alongside her writing, MacLeod lectured in literature and creative writing before turning to write full-time in 2018. In her RLF role, she draws on this rich range of teaching experience. She lives in Brighton and is visiting professor at the University of Chichester. The landscapes of Sussex, where she has lived since 1989, are an ongoing source of inspiration for her.

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