Professor Vesna Goldsworthy

Vesna Goldsworthy is a novelist, memoirist and poet with many years' experience in teaching creative writing and English literature. She came to academia after a career at the BBC and she continues to produce and present radio programmes.

Her first novel Gorsky (2015) was the New York Times Editor's Choice and Waterstones Book of the Month, as well as being long-listed for the Baileys Prize and serialised as Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio Four. It has been translated into fifteen languages. Her second, Monsieur Ka (2018) was one of the Times' 'Summer Reads' choice of best new novels.

Her third novel, Iron Curtain (2022) was one of the New Yorker Best Books of 2023; the Times Best Books of 2022; the Financial Times Best Books of 2022; The Independent Book of the Year; The Spectator Book of the Year; the Tablet Book of the Month; The Guardian Book of the Day; Amazon Kindle Bestseller; Hatchards Book of the Week; LRB Bookshop Book of the Week; LRB Bookshop Best Books of 2022; Daunt Bookshop Book of the Week & John Sandoe Bookshop Winter Choice. It was shortlisted for the Society of Authors' Volcano prize, longlisted for the Dublin Prize, and it won Momo Kapor prize in 2022.

Her internationally best-selling memoir Chernobyl Strawberries (2005) was serialised in the Times and read by Goldsworthy herself as Book of the Week on Radio Four. The Crashaw Prize-winning poetry collection The Angel of Salonika (2011) was one of the Times Best Poetry Books of the Year, described by J.M. Coetzee as a 'welcome new voice in British poetry'.

Goldsworthy's Inventing Ruritania: the Imperialism of the Imagination (1998) is recognised as one of the key contributions to the study of Balkan and European identity. Described by Slavoj Zizek as an 'extraordinary book', and by the Washington Post as containing 'enough research to found an academic department', Ruritania is a much translated volume which continues to be taught at universities worldwide.

Room: Queens 221

Biography:

Vesna Goldsworthy was born in Belgrade in 1961 and has lived in London since 1986. She writes in English, her third language.

She obtained her BA in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from Belgrade University in 1985; and her MA in Modern English Literature (1992) and her PhD (1996) from the University of London.

She started her working life in publishing in 1986, working as editor for Chadwyck-Healey Ltd (Cambridge) and Editions Alecto (London), then moved to broadcasting in 1990. She worked as producer and presenter at the BBC World Service for ten years. She became a full time academic, teaching English Literature and Creative Writing, in 2000.

Vesna came to Exeter from the University of East Anglia in January 2017.