Glenn Patterson

Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia taught by Malcolm Bradbury. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1988 and was Writer in the Community for Lisburn and Craigavon under a scheme administered by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

He is the author of several novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Fat Lad (1992), was shortlisted for the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award and explores the effects of the political situation in Northern Ireland through the story of a young man returning to his homeland after an absence of ten years. Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995) narrates the experiences of three people brought together on the Euro Disney construction site. The International (1999), is set in a Belfast hotel in 1967, and tells the story of a day in the life of Danny, an 18-year-old barman; Number 5 (2003), traces the lives of the various occupants of a Belfast house over a 45-year period. That Which Was (2004), is also set in Belfast and explores the interaction between memory, history and society.



Lapsed Protestant, a collection of his non-fiction, was published in 2006.


Glenn Patterson has been Writer in Residence at the Universities of East Anglia, Cork and Queen's University, Belfast, where he currently teaches on the MA in Creative Writing. He was one of two writers (with poet Bernardine Evaristo) selected by the British Council and the Arts Council to attend the 'Literaturexpress Europa 2000' international literature tour, and has twice chaired the Council's annual Walberberg Seminar. In 2006, he was elected on to Aosdána, the affiliation of Irish Artists. His latest books are The Third Party, published in 2007, and Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2008).