Bruce Holsinger

Bruce W. Holsinger is an American author, novelist, and an academic and literary scholar. Currently, he is professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Academic career

Holsinger is considered an expert on the use of parchment in medieval English manuscript production. He organized, with bioarchaeologists from the University of York, the research project into uterine vellum which established the precise composition for the material used for the creation of the earliest bible manuscripts.

Novelist The New York Times described him as "gamekeeper turned poacher", due Holsinger, a professor at the University of Virginia specializing in medieval English literature, turning to writing fiction based around his academic interests. This was set in fourteenth-century England during the reign of King Richard II, and has Holsinger's protagonist John Gower—at the instigation of Geoffrey Chaucer—hunt down a supposedly revolutionary book, in which a series of poems predict the deaths of the kings of England. The Washington Post and op-eds for The New York Times.

In July 2025, Holsinger's fifth novel, Culpability, was named Oprah's Book Club pick for the month.

Books Fiction Culpability (2025) The Displacements (2022) The Gifted School (2019) The Invention of Fire (2015) A Burnable Book (2014) Non-Fiction

Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror (Chicago, 2007) The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (Chicago, 2005) Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture (Stanford, 2001)

Awards and honors

John Hurt Fisher Prize for A Burnable Book The Colorado Award for The Gifted School