Blake Morrison

Philip Blake Morrison (born 8 October 1950) is a British poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He has also written a study of the James Bulger murder, As If. Since 2003, Morrison has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Life and career

Morrison was born in Skipton, North Yorkshire, to an English father and an Irish mother. His parents were both physicians; his mother's maiden name was Agnes O'Shea, but her husband persuaded her to change "Agnes" to "Kim". The details of his mother's life in Ireland, to which he had not been privy, formed the basis for his autobiographical novel, Things My Mother Never Told Me.

Morrison lived in Thornton-in-Craven and attended Ermysted's Grammar School. He later studied English Literature at the University of Nottingham and UCL. He worked for the Times Literary Supplement (1978–81)' and was literary editor of both The Observer (1981–89) and the Independent on Sunday (1989–95). Morrison's early writing career outside of journalism was as a poet and poetry critic. He became a full-time writer in 1995 and has since produced novels and volumes of autobiography as well as plays, libretti, and writing for television. He has contributed articles to The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New Statesman, the New York Times and Poetry Review and since 2001 he has written regularly for The Guardian. In 2003 he became Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, London, and in 2008 he became Chair of The Reader Organisation, the UK centre for research and promotion of reading as a therapeutic activity. In 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Plymouth University.