Damian Barr

Barr was born in 1976 in Newarthill, Scotland. He graduated from Lancaster University in Sociology and English Literature in 1998, and in MA Contemporary Sociology in 2000.[2] In 2019 Barr obtained a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University.

Barr's first book was published in 2006 by Hodder & Stoughton. Get It Together: How To Survive Your Quarterlife Crisis was the first book concerned with the quarter-life crisis to be published in the UK. It was inspired by a column Barr wrote for The Times in 2001–03 about graduate work and life.[3] Barr's second book is Maggie & Me, a memoir of growing up in small-town Scotland during the Thatcher years. Bloomsbury acquired the book at auction in July 2010 and it was published in the UK in April 2013.[4] Barr received a 2018 University of Otago Scottish Writers Fellowship, which is based at the Pah Homestead in Auckland, New Zealand. His first novel,You Will be Safe Here was released internationally on 4 April 2019. Exploring themes of British concentration camps in South Africa during the second Boer War, the novel was met with widespread critical acclaim, and established Barr's reputation as one of the leading global LGBT voices writing today. [5]

In June 2020, Barr successfully led a campaign to have Baroness Emma Nicholson removed as honorary vice president of the Booker Prize, a prestigious annual prize awarded to the best English novel. This was in response to Nicholson, a peer in the House of Lords, saying that she had voted against same-sex marriage in 2013 because she believed “it would lead to degrading the status of women and of girls”, a statement Barr called "homophobic".[6]

Nicholson was subsequently removed from her position by the Booker Prize in late June 2020. Barr was accused of hypocrisy when it emerged approximately a week later that he had used offensive language toward transgender people and women on Twitter in the past. In April 2009 he wrote: “Tittering sickly @ story of 6’5” tranny who failed to hang herself from 5 ft balcony this wknd. How many failures can one person take?” This was followed by other tweets between 2009 and 2013 in which he also used the word 'tranny' or referred to women as 'bitches', as well as referring to a “nice tranny charity” and writing “lady-man truckers unite”.[7] In March, 2013, he tweeted that there was a “mad tranny going through my recycling bin”, but later that year he was advised that the word is highly offensive.

In response to his past tweets being revealed, Barr locked his account before sending out a tweet saying that he had used the word 'tranny' “flippantly, not maliciously”. He also said: “It is an unkind and hurtful word I’m embarrassed to have used. I apologised then. I remain sorry today. I listened and changed: I hope my solidarity and actions since speak louder than that word then.”.[6]

Barr is gay.[8][9] He lives in Brighton, Sussex,[10] with his husband, ceramics artist Mike Moran.[11] The couple met whilst students at Lancaster University. [12]