New Writing

UEA alumnus Ian McEwan is one of the three recipients of the 2020 Goethe-Institut’s Goethe Medal, an official honour of the Federal Republic of Germany that recognises outstanding contributions to international cultural exchange. The Goethe Medal is traditionally presented in Weimar on Goethe’s birthday, 28 August, and this year’s other recipients are the Bolivian museum director, singer and poet Elvira Espejo Ayca and the South African writer Zukiswa Wanner. Ian McEwan was the inaugural graduate of the UEA Creative Writing programme in 1971, and published his first collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, in 1975. His second novel The Comfort of Strangers (1981) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as were Black Dogs (1992), Atonement (2001), Saturday (2005) and On Chesil Beach (2007). He won the prize with Amsterdam in 1998. He was awarded a CBE in 2000 and has accepted the honorary awards of Distinguished Writing Fellow and Jubilee Professor of the University of East Anglia from the university. His most recent work, the Brexit satire The Cockroach, was published by Jonathan Cape in September 2019.