John Burnside, the multi-award-winning Scottish poet and novelist, has died aged 69.
Burnside won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Feast Days (1992), the Whitbread Poetry Award for The Asylum Dance (2000), and the Saltire Book of the Year for A Lie About My Father (2006).
In 2011, he won both the T S Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for Black Cat Bone.
His publisher, Jonathan Cape, announced that he died on Wednesday following a short illness.
“John was amongst the most acclaimed writers of his generation, and published prolifically across many forms – chiefly as a poet, but also as a novelist, memoirist, writer of short stories and academic works – over a career spanning nearly forty years,” the message read.
Anna Webber, his literary agent, said: “This is an immense loss. John Burnside had a unique voice that brought pleasure and solace to many readers across the globe.
“His work was characterised by deep empathy and understanding. He was finely attuned to the natural world, but also to people.
“These traits, so clearly visible in his writing, also marked out the man himself. John was kind and gentle and generous, and I will miss him terribly.”
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