Christopher Pressler

 

Christopher was born in the north of Ireland and read Modern History at Queen’s University Belfast. He has also studied on Nottingham Trent University’s prestigious MA in Creative Writing and at the University of Sheffield. Christopher is the University Librarian and Director of The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester.

He has co-edited two monographs with Scala Publishing on the special collections of the University of London, Director’s Choice and Senate House Library, which includes his tribute to Borges. He has written two novels, Canning Circus, which is set in Nottingham, published by Heartland, and 94 Degrees in the Shade, which is the story of the Cambridge spies as students, published by Pegasus. He has been commissioned for two further novels, The Notes, which is a psychological exploration of Benjamin Britten and White which is set in Belfast. Christopher has written three short stories for the Cambridge Independent newspaper, The Leper Chapel, The White Whale or How To Write a Novel and The Grasshopper and is working on a collection of short stories based in Cambridge.

Amongst his most loved writers are Jeanette Winterson, E.M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip Larkin, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges, Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney.

Meeting the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins at the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin

Christopher has served on the Board of the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin and as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. As a University Librarian he has written the National Digitisation Review for Research Libraries UK and Ireland’s Memory, Ireland’s Discovery for the Consortium of National and University Libraries in Ireland. He is a member of a large number of library boards and committees in the UK and internationally. He has been University Librarian and Director of Libraries at Dartington College of Arts, The University of Nottingham, The University of London, Dublin City University and now at The University of Manchester.

Contact:

Twitter: @chris_pressler

Office: The University of Manchester Library

Amazon Books: Christopher Pressler

Images: Cambridge Independent Newspaper / Workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, 1450, National Gallery, London