A. L. Kennedy has won a variety of UK and international book awards, including a Lannan Award, the Costa Prize, the Heinrich Heine Preis, the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rees Prize. She has twice been included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She has written ten novels, one of which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, six short story collections, three books of non-fiction and three books for children. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Akademie der Kunst. She also writes for the stage, screen, TV and has created an extensive body of radio work including documentaries, monologues, dramas and essays. She also performs occasionally in one-person shows and as a stand-up comic.
'Kennedy is a force of nature.' -- New York Times 'It seems everything [Kennedy] touches turns to art … she continues to impress with her psychological fearlessness and breathtaking affection for language.' -- New York Times 'A testament to the minor miracle of Kennedy's talent … a talented stylist, her lyrical flights are often musical and rich.' -- New York Magazine 'A distinctive monument in the landscape of contemporary Scottish writing. Truthful, surprising and visceral, it provokes the sort of response that reminds us what fiction is for.' -- LA Times Review of Books, books of the year 'Kennedy does bleak the way the Russians do epic; unremittingly, awesomely and undershot with redeeming humour' -- Sunday Times 'Kennedy brilliantly interweaves over-wrought internal dialogue with external outrageous acts. The unfolding tenderness of nature and of amity blend superbly with the casualness of daily horror.' -- Independent on Sunday 'Kennedy is a superb writer and the canniness of her observation keeps you reading' -- Sunday Times 'Kennedy's exquisite blending of the limits of pain and courage recall Primo Levi.' -- Financial Times