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, and is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. [1]
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.[2] She writes primarily about Asia.
Career
[edit]Barker is the author of four novels: Sayonara Bar, which Time magazine called "a cocktail of astringent cultural observations, genres stirred and shaken, subplots served with a twist",[3] and The Orientalist and the Ghost, both published by Doubleday and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.[4]
Her third novel The Incarnations is a "stunning tale of a modern Beijing taxi driver being pursued by his soulmate across a thousand years of Chinese history" and was published by Doubleday in 2014.[5] It won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize in 2015.[6]
Her fourth novel Old Soul was published in 2025 by Penguin Fig Tree. An excerpt won a Northern Writers Award for Fiction in 2020. [7]
Barker is also a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.[1]
Bibliography
[edit]- Sayonara Bar, 2005
- The Orientalist and the Ghost, 2008
- The Incarnations, 2014
- Old Soul, 2025
References
[edit]- ^ a b Barker, Susan (6 February 2025). Old Soul.
- ^ British Council Archived 14 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ 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