Kirsty Gunn

Kirsty Gunn is an internationally published writer of novels and short stories that focus on ordinary lives and relationships and seek to show within the day-to-day those shocking moments of intimacy and tiny drama that make up human experience. Her work has been shortlisted for and won many prizes including the Edge Hill Short Story prize and Frank O’Connor International Short Story award and a James Tait Black prize and Scottish Book of the Year award for her novels, and has been made into films, broadcast and dance theatre. Her most recent novel is Caroline’s Bikini (Faber), recently published in Germany and France, and an earlier novel, The Big Music, comprises art work, music and a film featuring the well-known Scottish actor Brian Cox.

She is also an essayist and publisher of essays; and directs the research centre Imagined Spaces, set up to encourage new work and thinking around the essay form. She holds a Chair at the University of Dundee and lives in Scotland and London with her husband and two daughters. Her reviews and nonfiction appear in a range of journals and newspapers, including the LRB, PN Review and the Guardian, and her long form essay, My Katherine Mansfield Project, was published by Notting Hill Editions and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories and essays, and is co-editing a Selected Letters by Katherine Mansfield for Oxford University Press.