Overview
Frances Leviston is a British poet, critic and short story writer, and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, UK.
Her first collection of poetry, Public Dream, was published by Picador in 2007 and shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Award. Her second collection, Disinformation, was published by Picador in 2015 and shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her poems have appeared in publications including the New Yorker, Poetry (Chicago), The Nation, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and Poetry Ireland Review.
Her first book of short stories, The Voice in My Ear, was published by Jonathan Cape in March 2020. A story from this, 'Broderie Anglaise', was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2015 and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. 'Muster's Puppets Presents...', was published in Virginia Quarterly Review.
She has twice collaborated with the composer Martin Suckling, first on Emily's Electrical Absence, a series of poems and compositions inspired by the EU-funded PETMEM project to explore new computer processing technologies in 2018, and most recently on Black Fell, an interactive digital opera.
She has published scholarly work on Elizabeth Bishop in the peer-reviewed American journal Twentieth Century Literature. “Mothers and Marimbas in ‘The Bight’: Bishop’s Danse Macabre" was awarded the journal’s Andrew J. Kappel Prize for Literary Criticism in 2015. Her reviews and essays on poetry have appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, Twentieth-Century Literature, Edinburgh Review and others.
Her "Mothers and Marimbas in 'The Bight': Bishop's Danse Macabre" was awarded the Andrew J. Kappel Prize for Literary Criticism in 2015.