Carol Birch (born 1951) is an English novelist, lecturer and book critic. She also teaches creative writing.

Life

Birch was born in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. Her parents had met in a wartime armaments factory. Her father, a metallurgist, also played trombone in a Manchester jazz band known as The Saints. She took English and American Studies at

Keele University Keele University, officially known as the University of Keele, is a public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, Keele ...

. After a period in the Waterloo area of London (which would be the setting for her first novel), she moved to

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns a ...

, Ireland, with her first husband, an artist, taking his name Birch and turning to writing, but she returned to London, where the marriage ended. Birch and her second husband, Martin Butler, moved back to the North West in 1989. She currently lives with her family in Lancaster, where her husband teaches at

Lancaster and Morecambe College Lancaster and Morecambe College is a further education College situated on Torrisholme Road, between Lancaster and Morecambe, Lancashire, England. The college has been providing the local area with access to further and higher education since ...

Awards

The author of twelve novels, Birch won the 1988 David Higham Award for the Best First Novel of the Year for ''Life in the Palace'', and the

Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman of the publisher Faber & Faber. It recognises a single volume of poetry or fiction by a United Kingdom, Irish ...

with ''The Fog Line'' in 1991; Her novel ''Turn Again Home'' was on the long list for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. Her novel ''Jamrach's Menagerie'' was long-listed for the Orange Prize 2011, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011, and an extract from it appeared in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. In 2014 Birch was awarded an

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

D.Litt. Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Doctor ...

by Lancaster University.

Influences

Among the working-class writers to whom Birch acknowledges a debt are the fellow Lancastrians

Shelagh Delaney Shelagh Delaney, FRSL (; 25 November 1938 – 20 November 2011) was an English dramatist and screenwriter. Her debut work, '' A Taste of Honey'' (1958), has been described by Michael Patterson as "probably the most performed play by a post-war ...

and Louis Golding, and the Welshman

Howard Spring Howard Spring (10 February 1889 – 3 May 1965) was a Welsh author and journalist who wrote in English. He began his writing career as a journalist but from 1934 produced a series of best-selling novels for adults and children. The most su ...

. Several of her novels have been translated into German, and ''Jamrach's Menagerie'' into Romanian. Birch also teaches creative writing and contributes reviews to a number of newspapers.King's Lynn Literary Festivals 201
Retrieved 18 December 2014.
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Works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Birch, Carol 1951 births Living people English women novelists People from Lancaster, Lancashire Writers from Manchester Alumni of Keele University 20th-century English novelists 21st-century English novelists 20th-century English women writers 21st-century English women writers