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The University of Southampton
Humanities

Dr Morag Joss 

Royal Literary Fund Fellow

Dr Morag Joss's photo

Dr Morag Joss is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Southampton.

Morag Joss is a novelist. She is one of the Royal Literary Fund Fellows at Southampton University, who are on campus to help students with any aspect of their academic writing. Any student from any discipline is welcome to book a one-to-one tutorial for help with writing problems big and small, from essay plans to apostrophes.

Morag graduated from St Andrews University with a degree in English and completed her doctorate at Oxford Brookes. Her first three novels are whodunnits, the first of which, Funeral Music, was nominated for the USA Dilys Award for a first novel. Later awards and shortlistings include the CWA Silver Dagger for Half Broken Things (later adapted as a TV film starring Penelope Wilton) and the USA Edgar Best Novel Award for The Night Following. However, she has never considered herself the real thing as a crime writer; she now writes fiction which some critics describe as novels of 'pyschological suspense' and others as literary fiction. In 2008 she was a Heinrich Böll Writer in Residence on Achill Island, Ireland. Her television play for Sky Arts, Famous Last, starring Pauline Collins, has been broadcast worldwide. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies and the most recent, It May be Lalique, was broadcast on Radio 4 to celebrate International Women's Day 2012. Her eighth novel, Our Picnics in the Sun, published in 2013, was described by one reviewer as 'poetic and profound' and 'not only transcend[ing] genre' but 'just plain transcendent' (Ed Siegel, USA Newsday). Morag is at work on her next novel, Good to Go. Most of her work has been translated into several languages.

Morag teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and Oxford University, and is currently Creative Writing Fellow at Reading University.

Dr Morag Joss
Faculty of Humanities University of Southampton Avenue Campus Highfield Southampton SO17 1BJ United Kingdom
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