A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane
Luke Kennard
Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet and novelist
His literary criticism has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry London, and Times Literary Supplement. He lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.
In 2014, he was named one of the ‘Next Generation Poets’ by the Poetry Book Society in their once-per-decade list. Cain, his collection of poetry, was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and described by Alan Hollinghurst as ‘the cleverest and funniest thing I’ve read this year’. Notes on the Sonnets, an anarchic response to Shakespeare’s sonnets, won the Forward prize for Best Poetry Collection in 2021.
Black Bag was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026.
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