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Anna Burns

b. 1962

Northern Irish writer

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About Anna Burns

Born 1962. Anna Burns is a British novelist and writer.

Anna Burns FRSL (born 7 March 1962) is a writer from Northern Ireland. Her novel Milkman won the 2018 Booker Prize, the 2019 Orwell Prize for political fiction, and the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

Biography She was born in Belfast and raised in the working-class Catholic district of Ardoyne. She attended St. Gemma's High School. In 1987, she moved to London. As of 2014, she lives in East Sussex, on the south English coast.

Work Her first novel, No Bones, is an account of a girl's life growing up in Belfast during the Troubles. The dysfunctional family in the novel symbolizes the Northern Ireland political situation. No Bones won the 2001 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize presented by the Royal Society of Literature for the best regional novel of the year in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Among the novels that depict the Troubles within the Literature of Northern Ireland, No Bones is considered an important work and has been compared to Dubliners by James Joyce for capturing the Belfast population's everyday language.

Her second novel, Little Constructions, was published in 2007 by Fourth Estate (an imprint of HarperCollins). It is a darkly comic and ironic tale centred on a woman from a tightly knit family of criminals on a mission of retribution.

In 2018, Burns won the Booker Prize for her third novel Milkman, making her the first Northern Irish writer to win the award. After the ceremony, Graywolf Press announced that it would publish Milkman in the U.S. on 11 December 2018.

In 2021, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).

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Important facts

Birth century
Occupation
Nationality
Education
St Gemma's High School, St. Gemma's High School
Awards
Booker Prize; Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize; Orwell Prize for Political Fiction; National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; Honorary doctorate; Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Contemporaries

People whose lives overlapped Anna Burns's

Frequently asked questions

Who is Anna Burns?

Northern Irish writer

When was Anna Burns born?

Anna Burns was born on 7 March 1962 in Belfast.

What is Anna Burns's occupation?

Anna Burns is a novelist and writer.

What nationality is Anna Burns?

Anna Burns is British.

Sources & further reading

Β· Wikipedia: Anna Burns

Β· Wikidata: Q4766889

Β· DBpedia: Anna Burns

Cite this page

APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Anna Burns. https://biography.guide/anna-burns/

MLA: "Anna Burns." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/anna-burns/.

Chicago: "Anna Burns." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/anna-burns/.

Data last updated: 2026-09-21 Β· Spot an error? Report a correction.

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