William Fiennes (author)

William Fiennes FRSL (born 1970 ) is a British literary critic and writer who was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award.

Life

He comes from the family Fiennes from Broughton Castle near Banbury, and is the son of Nathaniel Fiennes, 21st Baron Saye and Sele. One of his distant relatives include the researcher Ranulph Fiennes and actor Ralph Fiennes and Joseph Fiennes. The weitläufigeren ancestors of the family belonged to the travel writer Celia Fiennes, the first woman traveled all the English counties 1684-1712.

After attending Eton College Fiennes studied at the University of Oxford and then worked as a teacher. Already during his studies he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease.

In 2002 he released his first book The Snow Geese, in which he reported on the migration of the Great Snow Goose by North America. For this book, he was honored in 2003 with the Hawthornden Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Young Writer of the Year Award from the Sunday Times and was also nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He then worked for two years as a fellow in creative writing at Wolfson College, University of Oxford and is since 2007 known as Writer -in- Residence at the American School in London.

In 2009 he published his second book, The Music Room, which tells of a young man who grows up with his suffering from epilepsy, brain damage and brother in a castle. This book was nominated among other things, for the Costa Book Award and the Duff Cooper Prize. In addition, he was in 2009 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Publications

• The train of snow geese: a journey between heaven and earth, original title The Snow Geese, 2004, ISBN 3-446-20488-1