Internationally acclaimed novelist and short story writer Sarah Hall has joined The University of Manchester as a Professor of Creative Writing.
Sarah joins a prestigious teaching team at the University's Centre for New Writing made up of novelists, poets, screenwriters, playwrights and non-fiction writers, including Jeanette Winterson, Ian McGuire, Jason Allen-Paisant, Beth Underdown, Horatio Clare, Tim Price and John McAuliffe.
Hailed as a 'writer of show-stopping genius', Sarah is a two-time Man Booker Prize nominee and an award-winning author of six novels and three short-story collections. Notably, she is the only author to win the prestigious BBC National Short Story Award twice -first in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox' and again in 2020 with 'The Grotesques'. Her new novel, Helm, will be published in August 2025 by Faber who describe it as a 'wondrous, elemental new novel … about nature, people and the sliver of time we have left'.
Director of the Centre New Writing, Dr. Kaye Mitchell, said: "It feels like a tremendous coup to have Sarah Hall join the Centre for New Writing. Personally, I've been beguiled by her beautiful, sensuous prose since the publication of her debut novel, Haweswater, in 2002 and she is simply one of the absolute best short story writers working today. She's also a writer rooted in the North and in northern landscapes, histories and peoples - a writer whose elemental evocation of natural environments feels passionate and timely. Our Creative Writing students will benefit enormously from her critical eye and creative influence."
Sarah's work has been published in more than 15 languages, worldwide. In the UK, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has won a clutch of prizes - including the Society of Authors Betty Trask Award and Commonwealth Writers Best First Novel (for Haweswater, 2002), the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for The Carhullan Army, 2007), and the Portico Prize (for How to Paint a Dead Man, 2010). She has also served on the judging panels of The Booker Prize, The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Northern Writers Awards, and the Commonwealth Short Story Award. In 2025, she is Chair of the judging panel for the Forward Prize for Poetry.
In addition to her fiction, Sarah frequently publishes journalistic reviews, op-eds and provocations; she has written feature length radio plays and scripts and adapted her own work for radio. She commentates for culture programmes including primetime shows on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and has presented radio and television documentaries for the BBC and Sky Arts. Currently, Sarah is working on a film adaptation of The Wolf Border with AC Chapter One/Climate Spring and an original TV series concept for Bonafide Films.
Sarah was previously Professor of Practice at the University of Cumbria, and has taught masterclasses and workshops for The Arvon Foundation, The Faber Academy, The Guardian, and universities including Cambridge and St. Andrews.
