Gordon Burn was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 born in Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

 and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction.

Burn's novels deal with issues of modern fame and faded celebrity, as well as life through a media lens. His novel Alma Cogan

Alma Cogan (novel)

Alma Cogan is the title of a 1991 novel by Gordon Burn, reprinted in 2004. It was Burn's first novel and won the Whitbread Book Award in 1991. In the UK it was published in 1991 with the title Alma Cogan...

(1991), which imagined the future life of the British singer Alma Cogan

Alma Cogan

Alma Cogan was an English singer of traditional pop music in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dubbed "The Girl With the Laugh/Giggle/Chuckle In Her Voice", she was the highest paid British female entertainer of her era...

 had she not died in the 1960s, won the Whitbread Award

1991 Whitbread Awards

-References:*...

 for Best First Novel. His other novels Fullalove and The North of England Home Service appeared in 1995 and 2003 respectively. His non-fiction deals primarily with sport and true crime. His first book Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son was a study of Peter Sutcliffe

Peter Sutcliffe

Peter William Sutcliffe is a British serial killer who was dubbed "The Yorkshire Ripper". In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attacking seven others. He is currently serving 20 sentences of life imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital...

, 'the Yorkshire Ripper' and his 1998 book Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred

Fred West

Frederick Walter Stephen West , was a British serial killer. Between 1967 and 1987, he alone, and later, he and his wife Rosemary, tortured, raped and murdered at least 11 young women and girls, many at the couple's homes. The majority of the murders occurred between May 1973 and September 1979 at...

 and Rosemary West

Rosemary West

Rosemary Pauline "Rose" West is a British serial killer, now an inmate at HMP Low Newton, Brasside, Durham, after being convicted of 10 murders in 1995...

, dealt in similar detail with one of Britain's most notorious serial killers.

Burn's interest in such infamous villains extended to his fiction, with Myra Hindley, one of the 'Moors murderers', featuring prominently in the novel Alma Cogan

Alma Cogan (novel)

Alma Cogan is the title of a 1991 novel by Gordon Burn, reprinted in 2004. It was Burn's first novel and won the Whitbread Book Award in 1991. In the UK it was published in 1991 with the title Alma Cogan...

. His sport-based books are Pocket Money: Inside the World of Snooker

Snooker

Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a green baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regular table is . It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white , 15 worth one point each, and six balls of different :...

(1986) and Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion (2006), which deals with the twin stories of Manchester United footballers Duncan Edwards

Duncan Edwards

Duncan Edwards was an English footballer who played for Manchester United and the England national team. He was one of the Busby Babes, the young United team formed under manager Matt Busby in the mid 1950s, and one of eight players who died as a result of the Munich air disaster.Born in Dudley,...

 and George Best

George Best

George Best was a professional footballer from Northern Ireland, who played for Manchester United and the Northern Ireland national team. He was a winger whose game combined pace, acceleration, balance, two-footedness, goalscoring and the ability to beat defenders...

 and the "trajectory of two careers unmoored in wildly different ways."

He also wrote a book with British artist Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...

, On the Way to Work, a collection of interviews from various dates between 1992-2001. He contributed to The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

regularly, usually writing about contemporary art.

Fiction

• Alma Cogan
  Alma Cogan (novel)
  Alma Cogan is the title of a 1991 novel by Gordon Burn, reprinted in 2004. It was Burn's first novel and won the Whitbread Book Award in 1991. In the UK it was published in 1991 with the title Alma Cogan...
  
  (1991)
• Fullalove (1995)
• The North Of England Home Service (2003)
• Born Yesterday: The News As A Novel (2008)

Non-fiction

• Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son: The Story Of Peter Sutcliffe (1984)
• Pocket Money: Inside The World Of Snooker (1986)
• Happy Like Murderers: The Story Of Fred And Rosemary West (1998)
• On The Way To Work (with Damien Hirst
  Damien Hirst
  Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
  
  ) (2001)
• Best And Edwards: Football, Fame And Oblivion (2006)