Barney Norris

Born in Sussex in 1987, Barney Norris, an award-winning playwright, poet and essayist, grew up in Salisbury. He achieved a BA from Keble College, Oxford and an MA from Royal Holloway, University of London. After university, he founded the touring theatre company Up in Arms with Alice Hamilton. His debut full-length play, Visitors (2014), won the Critics' Circle Award and the Offwestend Award for Most Promising Playwright, and his short plays include At First Sight (Up In Arms, 2011) and Fear of Music (Up In Arms with Out of Joint, 2013). In addition to his plays, Norris's writing has appeared in the Guardian and the Independent, and he has published poetry and fiction. His first novel, Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain, was a Times bestseller and his second novel, Turning for Home, has recently been published. His study To Bodies Gone: The Theatre of Peter Gill (2014) is the first book-length study of one of contemporary theatre's leading artists. He is an Associate Artist at Oxford Playhouse and the Martin Esslin Playwright in Residence at Keble College. He has also been named as one of the 1000 Most Influential Londoners by the Evening Standard.