Anna Burns

Life
b. Ardoyne, Belfast; ed. St. Gemma’s High School; moved to London, 1987, and started a degree in Russian; settled in East Sussex, 2014; issued No Bones (2001), a noir novel about a girl growing up in the Belfast Troubles, opening with Amelia Lovett her barricaded against the neighbours and under the table with the family dog; Little Constructions (2007), concerning a woman from a tightly-knit family of criminals intent on revenge; shortlisted for the Orange Prize and winner the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize [RSL]; Mostley Hero (2014), about Femme who is under a spell [geas?] to kill her lover, Hero - a dark jaunt; Milkman (2108), about an unnamed girl (‘middle girl’) being pursued by an older paramilitary milkman; winner of Man Booker Prize and Orwell rize, 2019.

[Note: Burns, who is reticent about her biography, started writing in an artist’s sketch book in on London and suffered a painful back injury in an accident; she also thanks the food bank in the acknowledgements of her 2018 novel.]

Works
Novels
  • No Bones (London: Flamingo 2001; reiss. 2010), 336pp,
  • Little Constructions (London: Fourth Estate 2007), 304pp.
  • Mostly Hero (2014)[novella]
  • Milkman (London:  Faber & Faber 2018), 368pp.
Shorter fiction (novellas)
  • [...]

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Criticism
  • Lucy Ellmann, ‘Trigger happy,’ in The Guardian (9 June 2007).
  • Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem, ‘Specter and Doubt in Anna Burns’ No Bones’, in The Literature of Northern Ireland: Spectral Borderlands (NY: Palgrave 2015), pp. 137-79 [Chap. 4] - available online; accessed 28.09.2020].
  • Claire Kilroy, review of Milkman, in The Guardian (31 May 2018) - available online.
  • Lisa Alldarce, interview-article, in The Guardian (17 Oct. 2018) - available online.

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References

[See Wikipedia entry - online; accessed 27.10.2018.]