The International Literature Residency offers an established writer based outside the UK a period of at least six weeks at Cove Park during the summer programme. The International Writer works on their own projects in the supportive environment of Cove Park, and also has the opportunity to make new contacts with writers and artists in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK. The International Writer in 2014 is Fred D’Aguiar.

Previous International Writers include Christos Tsiolkas, Anne Carson, Syl Cheney Coker.

Fred D’Aguiar’s dozen books of poetry and fiction have been translated into a dozen languages. His first novel, The Longest Memory, won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was made into a film by Channel 4 (UK). A number of essays have appeared in Harper’s, Wasafiri, Callaloo, Best American Essays and elsewhere. His play A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death, produced at Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1991.  His BBC-commissioned radio play, Days and Nights in Bedlam, was broadcast and webcast in October 2005. Continental Shelf, a U.K. Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the UK’s T.S. Eliot Prize in 2009.  His latest poetry collection is The Rose of Toulouse. His latest novel, Children of Paradise (HarperCollins, US; Granta, UK), is inspired by the events at Jonestown. Born in London in 1960 of Guyanese parents and brought up in Guyana and London, he teaches at Virginia Tech.

Fred D’Aguiar at Cove Park.