Background
Andrew Cowan was born in Corby, Northamptonshire, in 1960 and educated at Beanfield Comprehensive and the University of East Anglia (UEA).
Andrew Cowan was born in Corby, Northamptonshire, in 1960 and educated at Beanfield Comprehensive and the University of East Anglia (UEA).
He is the Director of the Creative Writing programme at UEA, from which he graduated in 1985.
"Common Ground" (1996) and "Crustaceans" (2000) both received Arts Council bursaries. "What I Know" was the recipient of an Arts Council Writers" Award and was published in 2005. His creative writing guidebook, "The Art of Writing Fiction", was published in 2011.
His fifth novel, "Worthless Men", was published in 2013.
Previously a long-standing tutor for the Arvon Foundation, he was for three years the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at UEA. He was appointed to the faculty in 2004 and currently teaches and lectures at undergraduate and Master of Arts level, and supervises a number of Doctor of Philosophy students. He is on the board of the National Academy of Writing, and on the advisory board of the writers-into-schools charity First Story.