Jenni Fagan
About Jenni Fagan
Jenni's debut novel, The Panopticon, received worldwide critical acclaim. It has been published in nine languages and is being adapted for film, for which she has written the screenplay.
In 2013, Jenni was the only Scottish writer to be on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list, a once-in-a-decade accolade.
She is a prize-winning poet and has twice been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and has been on lists for The Sunday Times Short Story Award, The Dublin Impac Prize,The James Tait Black Prize, The Desmond Elliott Prize, The Encore Award, The BBC International Short Story Prize, and was named as one of the Waterstones 11 best worldwide debuts in 2012.
Jenni has written for The New York Times, The Independent and Marie Claire among others as well as collaborations with many charities and groups including Norfolk Blind Association, Scottish PEN, Amnesty, Lewisham Hospital neonatal unit, young offenders, women in prison in the UK and the US, and with women at risk.
Jenni is a member of Liberty, an organisation which has fought for human rights since 1934.
Jenni has been Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh and her second novel, The Sunlight Pilgrims, was published in 2015 in the UK, US, France, Italy, and Czech. The Sunday Herald Culture Awards selected Jenni as the Scottish Author Of The Year in 2016. The Dead Queen of Bohemia (New & Collected poems) was published in 2016. Jenni’s most recent poetry collection There’s A Witch in the Word Machine was published in 2018.