‘A writer of grace and luminosity’
The Stage
Barney Norris is a writer dedicated to chronicling the dignity of ordinary life. Often set in the counties of Wiltshire and Hampshire where he was raised and where he lives, but venturing as far afield as Wallsend, the Hebrides and Paris, his twenty-one plays and quartet of novels are a portrait of contemporary England and the quiet heroism of the people who live there. Uniquely varied among his generation in the variety of work he has produced, he has appeared at the Bridge Theatre, the Bush Theatre, on bestseller lists and at the New York Met, as well as in woods, hospices, village halls and cafes. A complete catalogue of his writing is available on this site.
He has received the International Theatre Institute’s Award for Excellence, the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, a South Bank Sky Arts Times Breakthrough Award, an Evening Standard Progress 1000 Award, a Betty Trask Award, the Northern Ireland One Book Award and a Hawthornden Literary Foundation award. He has been a judge for the Classical Association, Live Canon, the Yale Drama Prize, the RSL Literature Matters Awards, the Somerset Maugham Awards, the British Book Awards and the George Devine Award, among others. His work has been translated into nine languages.
A former chair of the Society of Authors Scriptwriters Committee and member of the SoA Sustainability Committee and the Writers Guild Theatre Negotiating Team, and a former Green party general election candidate, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Oxford. The author of two book-length studies of artists, he also reviews fiction regularly for the Guardian.
‘High on any list of the best younger British writers’
The Guardian
Barney Norris 