Sarah Waters to be honoured with Goldsmiths fellowship

Goldsmiths University of London is to present novelist Sarah Waters with an honorary fellowship on Thursday 14th July in recognition of her "inspiring" literary career.

Waters was born in Pembrokeshire, south west Wales, in 1966 and studied for a BA in English Literature from the University of Kent, and an MA from the University of Lancaster. Waters completed her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London.

Her six novels have won or been shortlisted for multiple high-profile prizes. The "highly-acclaimed" Tipping the Velvet (Virago) was written in the 18 months after Waters completed her PhD, and went on to win a Betty Trask Award in 1999, Affinity (Virago) won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Fingersmith (Virago) was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and won the South Bank Show Award for Literature and the CWA Historical Dagger, The Night Watch (Virago) reached the shortlists for the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize and The Little Stranger (Virago) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the South Bank Show Literature Award.

Waters most recent work The Paying Guests (Virago) was shortlisted for The Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2015.

Waters said: “To be receiving an honorary fellowship from Goldsmiths, with its fantastic reputation, its longstanding commitment to creativity, innovation and debate, is hugely exciting. I've been an admirer of the university for a long time, and am touched and thrilled that my work is being celebrated in this way.”