Anna Burns

Anna Burns was born on 7 March 1962 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Raised as one of seven siblings in a working-class Catholic family in Ardoyne, Burns’ early childhood was shaped by the Troubles in Northern Ireland. When she was only 7 years old, her family was one of hundreds to be temporarily evacuated from Ardoyne to the Republic of Ireland as violence escalated. Burns attended St. Gemma’s High School, but had little interest in formal education, preferring to teach herself until she attended a night class in English at the College of Business Studies which sparked her passion for literature. 

In 1987, she moved to London to study Russian at Queen Mary College, but left before finishing her degree. Regardless, she credits both the physical and mental distance with helping her to process her life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles – first through reading, and later through her own writing. 

She drew upon her own life experience to write her first novel, No Bones (2001), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for its portrayal of a young girl growing up in Belfast during the Troubles. Her second novel, Little Constructions was published in 2007, and later followed by a novella, Mostly Hero (2014). Her most recent novel, Milkman (2018) returns to the setting of the Troubles, and quickly became her most successful work, winning the 2018 Man Booker Prize, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.