Glenn Patterson

Glenn Patterson, born in Belfast in 1961, is a novelist.

He attended Methodist College Belfast. He studied on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia taught by Malcolm Bradbury and returned to Northern Ireland in 1988. In addition to his novels, he also makes documentaries for the BBC and has published his collected journalistic writings as "Lapsed Protestant" (2006).

Patterson's recurring theme is the reassessment of the past. In "The International", he recovers that moment in Belfast's history just before the outbreak of the Troubles, to show diverse strands of city life around a city centre hotel, essentially to make the point that the political propagandists who explain their positions through history overlook its inconvenient complexity and the possibility that things might have turned out differently.

He has been a Writer in Residence at the University of East Anglia and the University of Cork, and is currently a tutor in Creative Writing at Queen's University Belfast. His novels are
* "Burning Your Own" (London: Chatto and Windus, 1988)
* "Fat Lad" (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992)
* "Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain" (London: Chatto and Windus, 1995)
* "The International" (London: Anchor, 1999)
* "Number 5" (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003)
* "That Which Was" (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004)
* "the third party" (Belfast : Blackstaff Press, 2007)

A collection of Patterson's journalistic writings were published by New Island in 2006 in "Lapsed Protestant".

He has received, among others, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Betty Trask Award.

References

* [http://www.britishcouncil.org/brussels-arts-glenn-patterson-interview.htm Glenn Patterson Interview]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/learning/getwritingni/popups/wh_patterson.shtml BBC Get Writing bio]