Golden Hill (Spufford) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Cambridge, England, U
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Awards—Costa First Novel Award; Ondaatje Prize; Somerset Maugham Award
• Currently—lives near Cambridge, England


Francis Spufford is the British author of five highly praised books of nonfiction and one work of fiction. He was raised in Cambridge, England, by two Cambridge academics: his father was an economic historian, and mother a social historian.

Spufford, himself, attended Cambridge, but earned his degree in English literature. For three years (1987-90) he was Chief Reader at Chatto and Windus, a noted English publisher, which had taken over Hogarth Press, once operated by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

His first book, I May Be Some Time, won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize, and a Somerset Maugham Award. It was followed by The Child That Books Built, Backroom Boys, Red Plenty (which was translated into nine languages), and most recently, Unapologetic. He published his first novel, Golden Hill, in 2017.

In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and currently teaches in the creative writing program at Goldsmiths College in London. He lives near Cambridge with his wife and daughter. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/14/2017.)