Susan Barker
Susan Barker | |
|---|---|
 Barker at the 2015 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | 1978 (age 46–47) |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Leeds University; Manchester University |
| Period | 2005–present |
| Website | |
| susanbarker | |
Susan Barker (born 1978) is a British-Malaysian novelist. She has written four novels, all dealing with Asian themes. Her book The Incarnations won the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize, and an excerpt from her novel Old Soul won a 2020 Northern Writers Award for Fiction.
Personal life
[edit]Barker has an English father and a Chinese-Malaysian mother and grew up in East London. She studied at Leeds University and undertook the graduate writing programme at Manchester University.[1] She writes primarily about Asia.
Career
[edit]Barker is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University[2][independent source needed] and the author of four novels.
Her novel Sayonara Bar was described by Time magazine called "a cocktail of astringent cultural observations, genres stirred and shaken, subplots served with a twist".[3]
Her second novel, The Orientalist and the Ghost was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.[4] Her third novel, the The Incarnations was described as a "stunning tale of a modern Beijing taxi driver being pursued by his soulmate across a thousand years of Chinese history".[5] It won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize in 2015.[6]
Her fourth novel Old Soul was published in 2025. An excerpt won a Northern Writers Award for Fiction in 2020. [7]
Major works
[edit]- Sayonara Bar. London: Doubleday, 2005
- The Orientalist and the Ghost. London: Doubleday, 2008
- The Incarnations. London: Doubleday, 2014
- Old Soul. London: Penguin Fig Tree, 2025.
References
[edit]- ^ British Council Archived 14 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Barker, Susan (6 February 2025). Old Soul.
- ^ Morrison, Donald (6 March 2005). "Sayonara, Tsunami Bar". Time. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
- ^ Richardson, Anna (15 July 2008). "Dylan Thomas Prize picks 14". The Bookseller. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
- ^ Farrington, Joshua (28 January 2014). "Transworld signs novel spanning China's history". The Bookseller. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
- ^ "Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize | Awards and Honors | LibraryThing". LibraryThing.com. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
- ^ "Winners 2020". New Writing North. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
External links
[edit]| International | |
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| National | |
 | This article about a novelist from the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- 1978 births
- Living people
- 21st-century British novelists
- 21st-century British women writers
- Alumni of the University of Leeds
- Alumni of the University of Manchester
- British Asian writers
- English people of Chinese descent
- English people of Malaysian descent
- English women novelists
- Novelists from London
- People associated with Leeds Trinity University
- British novelist stubs