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The
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to
Geoffrey FaberSir Geoffrey Cust Faber was a British academic, publisher and poet.Geoffrey Cust Faber was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford...
, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber. It recognises a single volume of poetry or fiction by a Commonwealth author under 40, and is in alternating years awarded to
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and
fictionFiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
.
In its first year, the prize was awarded to
Christopher MiddletonChristopher Middleton is a British poet and translator, especially of German literature.-Life:He was born in Truro, Cornwall, in 1926. He studied at Merton College, Oxford. He then held academic positions at the University of Zürich and King's College London. He became Professor of Germanic...
for his poetry.
Previous winners
- 1964 Christopher Middleton
Christopher Middleton is a British poet and translator, especially of German literature.-Life:He was born in Truro, Cornwall, in 1926. He studied at Merton College, Oxford. He then held academic positions at the University of Zürich and King's College London. He became Professor of Germanic...
for Torse 3 Poems 1949-1961 and George MacBethGeorge Mann MacBeth was a Scottish poet and novelist. He was born in Shotts, Lanarkshire.When he was three, his family moved to Sheffield....
for The Broken Places: Poems
- 1965 Frank Tuohy
John Francis Tuohy, was an English writer and academic. Born in London, he attended Stowe School and went on to read Moral Sciences and English at King's College, Cambridge. On completion of his studies, he worked in numerous academic posts under the auspices of the British Council. This included...
for The Ice Saints (fiction)
- 1966 Jon Silkin
Jon Silkin was a British poet.-Early life:Jon Silkin was born in London, in a Jewish immigrant family and named after Jon Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga, and attended Wycliffe College and Dulwich College During the Second World War he was one of the children evacuated from London ; he remembered that...
for Nature Within Man (poetry)
- 1967 William McIlvanney
William McIlvanney is a writer of crime stories, novels, and poetry. McIlvanney is a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s.- Life and career :McIlvanney was born in the...
for Remedy is None and John Noone for The Man with the Chocolate Egg (fiction)
- 1968 Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
for Death of a NaturalistDeath of a Naturalist is a collection of poems written by Irish Nobel winner Seamus Heaney. The collection was Heaney's second major published volume, and includes ideas which he had presented at meetings of The Belfast Group...
(poetry)
- 1969 Piers Paul Read
Piers Paul Read, FRSL is a British novelist and non-fiction writer.-Background:Read was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire...
for The Junkers (fiction)
- 1970 Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...
for King Log (poetry)
- 1971 J. G. Farrell for Troubles
Troubles is a 1970 novel by the English author J.G. Farrell. It won the Lost Man Booker Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Troubles concerns the dilapidation of a once grand Irish hotel , in the midst of the political upheaval during the Irish War of Independence .The novel is the first...
(fiction)
- 1972 Tony Harrison
Tony Harrison is an English poet and playwright. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem V and Fram, as well as his versions of ancient Greek tragedies, including the Oresteia and Hecuba...
for The Loiners (poetry)
- 1973 David Storey
David Rhames Storey is an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player....
for Pasmore (fiction)
- 1974 John Fuller
John Fuller is an English poet and author, and Fellow Emeritus at Magdalen College, Oxford.Fuller was born in Ashford, Kent, England, the son of poet and Oxford Professor Roy Fuller, and educated at St Paul's School and New College, Oxford. He began teaching in 1962 at the State University of New...
for Cannibals and Missionaries and Epistles to Several Persons (poetry)
- 1975 Richard B. Wright
Richard B. Wright, CM, is a Canadian novelist.Born in Midland, Ontario, to Laverne and Laura . Wright graduated from Midland high school in 1956, and attended and graduated from Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in the area of Radio and TV arts in 1959...
for In the Middle of a Life (fiction)
- 1976 Douglas Dunn
Douglas Eaglesham Dunn, OBE is a Scottish poet, academic, and critic. He currently lives in Scotland.-Background:Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire. He was educated at the Scottish School of Librarianship, and worked as a librarian before he started his studies in Hull...
for Love or Nothing (poetry)
- 1977 Carolyn Slaughter for The Story of the Weasel (fiction)
- 1978 David Harsent
David Harsent is an English poet & TV scriptwriter. As Jack Curtis and David Lawrence he has published a number of crime fiction novels....
for Dreams of the Dead and Kit WrightKit Wright is the author of more than twenty-five books, for both adults and children, and the winner of awards including an Arts Council Writers' Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award and the Heinemann Award...
for The Bear Looked Over the Mountain (poetry)
- 1979 Timothy Mo
Timothy Peter Mo is an Anglo-Chinese novelist. Born to a Welsh-Yorkshire mother and a Hong Kong Chinese father, Mo lived in Hong Kong until the age of 10 before he moved to Britain, studying at St John's College, Oxford.He self-publishes his books under the label "Paddleless Press".- Novels :*The...
for The Monkey King (novel)
- 1980 Hugo Williams
Hugo Williams is a British poet, journalist and travel writer. His full name is Hugh Mordaunt Vyner Williams He is the son of actor Hugh Williams and the model and actress Margaret Vyner, who co-wrote some upper-middle-class comedies in the late 1950s...
for Love-Life and George SzirtesGeorge Szirtes is a Hungarian-born British poet, writing in English, as well as a translator from the Hungarian language into English. He has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life.-Life:...
for The Slant Door (poetry)
- 1981 J M Coetzee for Waiting for the Barbarians
Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born author J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. The novel was published in 1980. It was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and...
(fiction)
- 1982 Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
for Why Brownlee Left and Tom PaulinThomas Neilson Paulin is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he is the GM Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.- Life and work :...
for The Strange Museum (poetry)
- 1983 Graham Swift
Graham Colin Swift FRSL is a British author. He was born in London, England and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. He was a friend of Ted Hughes...
for Shuttlecock (fiction)
- 1984 James Fenton
James Martin Fenton is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.-Life and career:...
for In Memory of War: Poems 1968-83
- 1985 Julian Barnes
Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending...
for Flaubert's ParrotFlaubert's Parrot is a novel by Julian Barnes that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize the following year...
(fiction)
- 1986 David Scott
Reverend Canon Dr David Scott is a Church of England priest, poet, playwright and spiritual writer.David Victor Scott was born in Cambridge, England, in 1947. He was educated at Solihull School, then studied Theology at Durham University and at Cuddesdon College. After ordination he spent two years...
for A Quiet Gathering (poetry)
- 1987 Guy Vanderhaeghe
Guy Clarence Vanderhaeghe, OC, SOM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer, best known for his two Western novels, The Englishman's Boy and The Last Crossing, set in the 19th century American and Canadian West...
for Man DescendingMan Descending is a collection of short stories written by Saskatchewan-born writer Guy Vanderhaeghe. The book was first published by Macmillan of Canada in 1982 and Vanderhaeghe went on to become one of the few first-time authors to win the coveted Governor General's Award for Fiction for this work...
(fiction)
- 1988 Michael Hofmann
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.-Biography:...
for Acrimony: Poems
- 1989 David Profumo
David John Profumo FRSL is an English novelist.He is the son of former British government minister John Profumo and actress Valerie Hobson. He succeeded his father as the 6th Baron Profumo, but like his father does not use the title, which is of Italian origin.He was educated at Eton College and...
for Sea Music (fiction)
- 1990 Michael Donaghy
Michael Donaghy was an award-winning New York poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985.-Life and career:...
for Shibboleth (poetry)
- 1991 Carol Birch
Carol Birch is a British novelist and attended Keele University. The author of eleven novels, she won the 1988 David Higham Award for the Best First Novel of the Year for Life in the Palace, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize with The Fog Line in 1991, and she was long-listed for the 2003 ManBooker...
for The Fog Line (fiction)
- 1992 Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
for Madoc: A Mystery (poetry)
- 1993 Will Self
William Woodard "Will" Self is an English novelist and short story writer. His fictional style is known for being satirical, grotesque, and fantastical. He is a prolific commentator on contemporary British life, with regular appearances on Newsnight and Question Time...
for The Quantity Theory of InsanityThe Quantity Theory of Insanity is a collection of short stories by Will Self, it won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1993.-Publishing Details:...
(fiction)
- 1994 John Burnside
John Burnside is a Scottish writer, born in Dunfermline.-Background:Burnside studied English and European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996...
for Feast Days (poetry)
- 1995 Livi Michael
-Personal life:Livi Michael,also known as, Olivia Michael, born March. 15, 1960 in Manchester, England, is a British fiction authoress who has published a total of 15 children and adult novels. She is the daughter of civil servant Ann Wood. Michael has been married twice, divorced from her first...
for Their Angel Reach (fiction)
- 1996 Kathleen Jamie
Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh....
for The Queen of Sheba (poetry)
- 1997 Emily Perkins
Emily Perkins is a New Zealand author.Perkins first won attention in 1996 with her first collection of stories, Not Her Real Name and Other Stories...
for Not Her Real Name (fiction)
- 1998 Don Paterson
Don Paterson, OBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet, writer and musician.-Background:Paterson was born in Dundee. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem A Private Bottling won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the...
for God's Gift to Women (poetry)
- 1999 Gavin Kramer for Shopping (fiction)
- 2000 Kathleen Jamie
Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh....
for Jizzen (poetry)
- 2001 Trezza Azzopardi
Trezza Azzopardi is a British writer.She was born in Cardiff to a Maltese father and a Welsh mother. She studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia, and currently works as a lecturer there...
for The Hiding Place (fiction)
- 2002 Greta Stoddart for At Home in the Dark (poetry)
- 2003 Justin Hill
Justin Hill is an English novelist whose novels have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize three times. Born in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island in 1971, he grew up in Yorkshire. He was educated at the historic St Peter's School, York....
for The Drink and Dream Teahouse (fiction)
- 2004 Glyn Maxwell
Glyn Maxwell is a British poet.-Early life:Though his parents are Welsh, Maxwell was born and raised in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. He studied English at Worcester College, Oxford. He began an MLitt there, but in 1987 moved to America to study poetry and drama with Derek Walcott at...
for The Nerve: Poems
- 2005 David Mitchell
David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist. He has written five novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.- Biography :...
for Cloud Atlas (fiction)
- 2006 Alice Oswald
-Career:Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald , and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England....
for Woods Etc. (poetry)
- 2007 Edward Docx for Self Help
Self Help is a novel by English author Edward Docx, published in 2007 by Picador; it won Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize that year and was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The novel has received positive reviews, his description of cities being compared to both Dickens and Dostoevsky.-Plot...
(fiction)
- 2008 Nick Laird
Nicholas 'Nick' Laird is a novelist and poet who was born, and grew up, in Cookstown, County Tyrone. He studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he attained a first in English. He went on to work at the global law firm Allen & Overy in London for six years, before leaving to concentrate...
for On Purpose (poetry)
- 2009 David Szalay for London and the South-East (fiction)
- 2010 Kona Macphee for Perfect Blue (poetry)