Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (1997), is the author of five highly-praised books of non-fiction.
The first, I May Be Some Time, won three literary prizes, and helped create a small new academic field, dedicated to the cultural history of Antarctica. The second, The Child That Books Built, gave Neil Gaiman ‘the peculiar feeling that there was now a book I didn’t need to write’. Backroom Boys was called ‘as nearly perfect as makes no difference’ by the Daily Telegraph; Red Plenty has been translated into nine languages, including Polish, Russian and Estonian; Unapologetic is richer in expletives than any previous work of religious advocacy, and is currently shortlisted for the Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. He has also been shortlisted or longlisted for prizes in writing about science, history, politics and ‘the spirit of place’.
He teaches at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge with his wife and younger daughter. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.