Stephen Kelman

Stephen Kelman grew up on the Marsh Farm council estate in Luton, a town in Bedfordshire near London. As a child, he lived in a multiethnic community much like Harri’s and witnessed the effects of poverty, crime, and violence firsthand. However, he notes that although violence was a problem, gang activity (and particularly knife crime) was not as significant an issue during his childhood as it is now. Kelman wanted to be a writer from the age of six or seven, but he studied marketing at the University of Bedfordshire and worked as a warehouse operative, care worker, and in local administration. In 2005, he decided to commit himself to writing. His first novel, Pigeon English, was picked from a “slush pile” by his agent. The novel was published in 2011 and received a host of awards, including the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Galaxy National Book Award for a new writer, the Guardian First Book Award, the Writers’ Guild Award for Fiction, and the Man Booker Prize. Kelman has since published a second novel, Man on Fire, in 2016.