Richard Beard
Richard Beard’s six novels include Lazarus is Dead and Damascus, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, while Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, for books that ‘extend the possibilities of the novel form’. His five works of non-fiction include the memoir The Day That Went Missing, winner of the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography and in the US a National Book Critics Circle finalist.
Formerly Director of The National Academy of Writing in London, he has taught British Studies at the University of Tokyo and graduate Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. In 2017 he was a juror for Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize and in the UK has judged the Costa Short Story Award and the BBC National Short Story Award. In 2023 he was the Briena Staunton Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin.
His latest project is the mass-participation collective online memoir, The Universal Turing Machine.
