Crossley-Holland, Kevin

Epithet: poet and lecturer

Kevin Crossley-Holland, the poet, translator, writer of children's stories, and broadcaster, was born in Mursley, North Buckinghamshire in 1941 and educated at Bryanston School and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. After graduating he was a Gregory Fellow in Poetry at Leeds University 1969-1971, and from 1967-1978 he lectured in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture for the Tufts University London Program. He also worked as a children's book editor for Macmillan and Victor Gollancz. He later taught for extended periods in America, first as Visiting Professor of English and Fulbright Scholar at St Olaf College, Minnesota, 1990, then as Professor and Endowed Chair in the Humanities and Fine Art at the University of St Thomas, Minnesota,1991-1995. He has published numerous volumes of adult poetry and several libretti for opera, and is well known for his version of Beowulf. Storm, his novella, won the Carnegie Medal in 1985.

Kevin John William Crossley-Holland was born in Mursley, Buckinghamshire, England in 1941. He took his B.A. from Oxford and has worked as an author, translator, editor, journalist, and professor. He is an authority on European history and literature and is a leading interpreter of the Dark Ages, especially British and Norse folktales. He has written the Wulf series of historical novels, series of Welsh and British folk tales, and poetry for children and adults.

Biographical source: Something About the Author, Volume 120, p. 70-80