Sean O'Brien has published seven books of poems, including November (Picador 2011, PBS Choice) and The Drowned Book (Picador, 2007), winner of the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes, followed by Collected Poems (Picador, 2012). Bloodaxe published his first two collections, The Indoor Park (1983) and The Frighteners (1987), as well as his essays, The Deregulated Muse (1998), and most recently, his Newcastle-Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, Journeys to the Interior: Ideas of England in contemporary poetry (2012). His translation of the Inferno appeared in 2006, his short story collection The Silence Room in 2008, and his novel Afterlife in 2009. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in Newcastle upon Tyne and is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.