John Burnside is Reader in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews. His areas of specialisation include creative writing, ecology and literature, American literature, poetry and philosophy.

His most recent publications include the poetry collections The Light Trap (Jonathan Cape, 2003), The Good Neighbour (Jonathan Cape, 2005) and Gift Songs (Jonathan Cape, 2007), the novels Living Nowhere (Jonathan Cape, 2004) and The Devil's Footprints (Jonathan Cape, 2007), and a personal memoir, A Lie About My Father (Jonathan Cape, 2006). Forthcoming from Jonathan Cape in 2008 is Glister (a novel). He is currently working on a second volume of personal memoir, probisionally entitled Waking Up in Toytown and due out in 2009, as well as a book of essays on poetry, visual art and ecology theory.