Colm Toibin accepts professorship at University of Manchester
27th January 2011
Award-winning Irish novelist Colm Toibin will become the new professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.
The Brooklyn author was appointed to his new position after fellow novelist Martin Amis announced he will end his four-year tenure as professor of creative writing in July this year.
Toibin, who will begin his professorship in September, will spend one semester a year teaching postgraduate students for two days a week, as well as appearing in four public events.
He will also host a fiction workshop for masters students and launch a new course called Arts for Writers, which will see him work with non-literary artists to examine how writing is influenced by disciplines such as music and theatre.
John McAuliffe, co-director of the university's Centre for New Writing, praised Amis' past work as the professor of creative writing.
'Colm Toibin, a great writer and a public intellectual, will be a similarly iconic appointment, inspiring students as well as contributing to cultural debates inside and outside the university,' he added.
In 2004, Toibin won the Dublin IMPAC Prize, the Prix du Meilleur Livre and the LA Times Novel of the Year for The Master, while Brooklyn took the 2009 Costa Novel of the Year accolade.