Russell Celyn Jones

Celyn Jones received his B.A. degree from University College London and his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa and has been a freelance feature writer for the Observer, Guardian, Independent, Time Out and Sunday Times, and a book reviewer for The Times for 15 years. In addition to the Man Booker Prize, he has also served as a judge for The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatji Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. He has taught at universities in the US and South Africa, at the Universities of East Anglia and Warwick, and is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London where he had set up the MA Creative Writing course in 2003 and was its director for 12 years. His first novel, Soldiers and Innocents, was made into a six-part series for BBC Radio 4 and won the David Higham Prize. Another of his novels, Seconds from the Sun, won the Weishanhu Prize in China for the best foreign novel.