Beneath the Earth is the first collection of short stories by UEA alumnus John Boyne and is published by Doubleday today. The collection includes ‘Rest Day’, which won the 2015 Writing.ie Short Story of the Year award. John graduated from the UEA MA in Creative Writing in 1995, and was that year’s recipient of the Curtis Brown prize. He subsequently returned to UEA as a Creative Writing Fellow in 2004, and again in 2014 to teach on the Creative Writing MA. He is now the sponsor of a bursary for young Irish writer to join the programme. John’s novels have been translated into 47 languages internationally. The first of them, The Thief of Time, was published in 2000, since when he has published nine other novels for adults, most recently A History of Loneliness, and four novels for younger readers, including The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, which was published successfully all over the world and was made into a feature film by Miramax. His new novel for children, The Boy At The Top Of The Mountain, will be published later this year.