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Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1963. His books of poetry have won many awards including the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Award for Drysalter (2013) and the Whitbread Poetry Prize for Corpus (2004). His Selected Poems was published by Cape in 2016. As a librettist, his work with composers has been performed in concert halls and opera houses around the world. The Sacrifice (for Welsh National Opera) with composer James MacMillan, won an RPS Award, and choral works Elliptics (for BBC Philharmonic) and The Anvil (for Manchester International Festival) with composer Emily Howard, were both nominated for Ivor Novello Awards. His non-fiction book Edgelands (with Paul Farley, 2011) won the Foyles Book of Ideas Award and the Jerwood Prize. He is an award-winning broadcaster and dramatist, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
His corpse-strewn first novel derives its title from St Patrick's habit of inscribing letters on new territory to transform it...the atmosphere of creeping menace kept this heathen reading, simultaneously irked and intrigued -- Mark Sanderson Daily Telegraph Crafty, sad and haunting Literary Review The narrative voice turns it from a dark whodunit into something more intriguing. But Roberts never forgets that his principal responsibility is to keep us hooked - and that he does with aplomb -- Barry Forshaw Daily Express Suitably disturbing and unsettling, and lingers long in the mind Daily Mail A cold, existential tale... One of the terrific things the novel offers is his rendering of a town in the grip of a nameless fear Observer
