Booker winner John Banville appointed UCC professor of creative writing

John Banville is to become visiting professor of creative writing at University College Cork. The award-winning novelist, a former literary editor of The Irish Times, will take up the role for the 2019-20 academic year, which begins next month.

As well as contributing to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, the Wexford-born writer will give two public readings during his year in the post, which is supported by an anonymous philanthropic donation to UCC.

Banville’s novels include the acclaimed Frames and Revolutions trilogies – The Book of Evidence, Ghosts and Athena; and Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter – and The Sea, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. His most recent novel, a continuation of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, is Mrs Osmond.

Banville also writes detective fiction as Benjamin Black. Those novels include the Quirke series, the first three books of which were televised by the BBC, and The Black-Eyed Blonde, a Philip Marlowe novel commissioned by the Raymond Chandler estate.

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Prof Lee Jenkins, head of UCC’s school of English and digital humanities, says the appointment “gives students an unparalleled opportunity to learn from a master craftsman of the novel”.

Banville’s accolades include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and the Ordine della Stella d’Italia.

UCC’s school of English and digital humanities is ranked among the top 150 departments for English in the QS World University Rankings.