Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford (born 1964) is an English author and writing teacher. His first novel Golden Hill received critical acclaim and numerous prizes including the Costa Book Award for First Novel, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. In 2007 Spufford was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Career Spufford was chief publisher's reader from 1987–1990 for Chatto & Windus. He is a creative writing professor at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Spufford specialised in non-fiction for the first part of his career, but began a transition towards fiction in 2010. In 2016 he published his first novel, Golden Hill.

Spufford has also edited three anthologies: The Chatto Book of Cabbages and Kings (1989), The Chatto Book of the Devil (1992), and The Antarctic (2008).

Spufford has written an unauthorised novel set in the universe of C. S. Lewis's Narnia series, The Stone Table. The novel takes place between The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Spufford distributed self-printed copies to friends. Writer Adam Roberts praised it as "a seamless recreation of Lewis's writing-style at its best". The author hoped to obtain permission from the C. S. Lewis estate to publish it commercially, but did not receive a response from the estate.

Personal life Spufford was born in 1964.

He studied English literature at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, receiving a BA in 1985.

A former atheist, he is now a practising Christian and is married to an Anglican priest, Jessica Martin. The couple have two children. He served from 2015 to 2021 on the General Synod of the Church of England as a lay representative of the Diocese of Ely.

Awards

Published work

I May Be Some Time (1996) The Child That Books Built (2002) Backroom Boys (2003) Red Plenty (2010) Unapologetic: Why Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense (2012) Golden Hill (2016) True Stories and Other Essays (2017) Light Perpetual (2021) Cahokia Jazz (2023) Nonesuch (2026)