The last few weeks have seen a trio of literary successes for the University’s Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies.

A L Kennedy, an Associate Professor in the Warwick Writing Program at the University, was recently awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. This highly prestigious international award is given to writers of exceptional quality who also demonstrate the potential for continued outstanding creative work.

She has also just won the Costa Novel Award, one of the UK’s biggest fiction awards (previously known as The Whitbread Prize). She won the award for her fifth novel, Day. This book tells the story of a character called Alfred Day, following his life as a tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber and later in 1949 when he takes a role as an extra in a POW film.

The third literary achievement for the English Department is with Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk joining the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies as an Honorary Professor. His translator, Maureen Freely, who travelled to Sweden with him when he collected his Nobel Prize for literature, is also a member of the English Department at Warwick.

Orhan Pamuk will contribute to the University’s Warwick Writing Programme and the creative writing degrees.