Jenni Fagan
Non-fiction writer, Poet, Novelist, Radio/tv/screenwriter
About
Jenni Fagan is an acclaimed novelist, poet and screenwriter. She is the author of five novels, one nonfiction memoir and eight poetry collections. In translation in nine languages, her work often explores themes related to the structures of society as seen in her first novel The Panopticon, which saw her named a Granta Best of Young British Novelists (2013) amongst many other accolades. The Panopticon tells the story of a female young offender growing up in local authority care in Scotland who believes that she has been created by a sinister experiment which monitors everything she does; this extends out into the wider panopticon of state control and modern society now. Her recent memoir Ootlin tells the story of Jenni’s life growing up in local authority care in Scotland and it won the Gordon Burn prize (2025).
Throughout her career Jenni has been dedicated to mentoring writers from less privileged backgrounds. She has worked with women in prison, those who have endured trafficking, young people from the care system. She was previously writer in residence at the Norfolk and Norwich Association for the Blind, Lewisham Hospital in the Neo-natal ward, and as a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow in Grez, France, and writer in residence at the University of Edinburgh.
Jenni has written for the New York Times, the Independent, the Society of Authors and Marie Claire amongst others. She has been on lists for the Women’s prize, Encore award, James Tait Black Memorial prize, the Desmond Elliott prize, the Sunday Times International Short Story prize, BBC National Short Story award and the Pushcart prize.
She had a successful play produced for the National Theatre of Scotland (2019), where she wrote the script to adapt her novel The Panopticon. It saw a sold-out run, with rave reviews. In 2020 she wrote the script and ariafor a film by Scottish Opera called Narcissistic Fish. This has been showcased as an example of cinematic opera fusion in film festivals in Europe. Narcissistic Fish was considered to be a groundbreaking digital opera film script and aria for Scottish National Opera which fused working-class Scottish characters and accents with a traditional operatic libretto. Jenni went on to write and direct a short film for Channel 4’s Skint series in 2022; this was made entirely during lockdown. In 2024 Jenni worked with Pixar on narrating 200 poems she had written for The Macallan; these were animated and screened worldwide.
Jenni sat her viva at the University of Edinburgh (2022) to become Dr Fagan. Her thesis focused on Structuralism and the metamorphosis of society, utilising Kafka’s The Metamorphosis to explore the self and other.
Jenni Fagan is a member of Liberty. She lives in Edinburgh with her cat and son.