Ben Myers

Myers grew up in Belmont, County Durham,[2] attending the estate's local comprehensive school, where he become interest reading and skateboarding.[3]

Myers attended his first concert in Durham in March 1990, when he was fourteen. Headlined by Steadfast, it led to him forming the punk rock band Sour Face the next year. The band quickly became involved in the Durham hardcore punk scene, alongside Steadfast, False Face and XdisciplineX. Despite being one of the few bands in the scene that was not straight edge, Sour Face became the mascots of the scene, with their third performance seeing them open for NOFX. Voorhees' first performance was opening for Sour Face in September 1991.[4]

Myers' books span literary fiction, nature/landscape writing, crime, historical fiction and poetry. He has been translated into eight languages.

His novel The Offing (2019) featured on Radio 4's Book At Bedtime, was a Radio 2 Book Club choice and chosen as a book of the year in The Times. The audio book was narrated by actor Ralph Ineson.

Myers' book The Gallows Pole (2017), a novelisation of the true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners, received a Roger Deakin Award and won the 2018 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.[5] As part of the prize, both author and book title appeared as the official Royal Mail franking stamp for a week on an estimated 60 million pieces of mail. The Gallows Pole was signed by Third Man Books, part of Third Man Records, for publication in the US/Canada in 2019.[6]

Beastings (2014) won the Portico Prize For Literature and the Northern Writers' Award. It was also longlisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize.

Pig Iron (2012) was set in the traveller/gypsy community of the north-east of England and was the first to be published under his full name Benjamin Myers. It won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize[7] and was longlisted for 3:AM Magazine.com's 'Novels of the Year'[8] and runner-up in The Guardian's 'Not The Booker Prize',[9] in the same year.

In 2014 Myers won the Society of Author's Tom-Gallon Trust Award,[10] for his short story, 'The Folk Song Singer'. He was runner-up in the same prize in 2018 for his story 'A Thousand Acres Of English Soil'. His poem 'The Path To Pendle Hill' was selected by New Statesman as one of its Poems Of The Year 2015[11] and work from the same collection were read by Myers on BBC1 programme Countryfile.

Myers' second novel, Richard: A Novel (2010) was a fictionalized account of the life of musician Richey Edwards. It was published by Picador in October 2010, and polarised critical opinion.

As a teenager Myers began writing for British weekly Melody Maker. In 1997 he became their staff writer. As of 2017 he has written about literature, music and the arts for a number of publications including New Statesman, Mojo, The Guardian, NME, The Spectator, BBC, New Scientist, Alternative Press, Kerrang!, Plan B, Arena, Bizarre, The Quietus, Vice, Shortlist, Caught by the River, Metal Hammer, The Morning Star, Classic Rock, 3:AM Magazine, Mineshaft and Time Out. In 2011 he published an article,[12] about his brief time as an intern at News of the World.

Myers has published several poetry collections and written a number of music biographies which have been widely translated. He has spoken about failing English Literature at A-level and being rejected by "more than a hundred" universities before being accepted by the University of Bedfordshire (formerly Luton University).

He is a founding member of the Brutalists, a literary collective including authors Adelle Stripe and Tony O'Neill, and widely acknowledged as the first literary movement to be launched by social networking sites. As of 2014, Myers has been straight edge for ten years.[13]

In late 2018 it was reported he had signed to Bloomsbury Publishing.[14] The deal was satirised in the 'Books & Bookmen' column in Private Eye.[15]

In 2019 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from York St John University.[16]

• 2013 Northern Writers' Award winner for Beastings
• 2013 Gordon Burn Prize winner for Pig Iron
• 2014 Tom-Gallon Trust Award winner for The Folk Song Singer
• 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize longlist for Beastings
• 2015 The Portico Prize For Literature winner for Beastings
• 2016 Roger Deakin Award winner for The Gallows Pole
• 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist for The Gallows Pole
• 2018 Tom-Gallon Trust Award (runner-up) for A Thousands Acres Of English Soil
• 2018 Walter Scott Prize winner for The Gallows Pole
• 2019 Prix Polars Pourpres Découverte for Turning Blue (published in France as Dégradation)
• 2020 The Portico Prize For Literature shortlisted for Under The Rock
• 2020 Lieblingsbuch der Unabhängigen (Independent Booksellers' Award in Germany) winner for The Offing

Myers grew up on the Belmont estate in Durham, and attended Belmont Community School.[21]

• Myers' website
• Ben Myers' Guardian articles and profile