John Burnside (Dumferline, Scotland, 1955), poet and novelist, studied English literature and European languages ​​at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, and worked for a while as a computer programmer. He has been a resident writer at the University of Dundee, and currently teaches at St. Andrews Creative Writing. His first book of poems, The Hoop, saw the light in 1988. Since then he has published eleven poems including Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), The Myth of the Twin (1994), The Asylum Dance ( 2000), with which he won the Whitbread Poetry Award, The Light Trap (2001), Gift Songs (2007), The Hunt in the Forest (2009) and Black Cat Bone (2011), as well as a volume of Selected Poems (2006) ). Burnside is also the author of six novels (A Summer of Drowning, 2011, is the most recent), the book of stories Burning Elvis (2000) and two splendid memoirs, A Lie About My Father (2006) and Waking Up in Toytown (2010), in which he explores the difficult relationships with his father and the addictions and mental disorders he suffered in his youth, the root of many of the obsessions that make up his imagination. He currently resides in Fife, Scotland, professionally devoted to literature.