Chris Arthur was born in Belfast and grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Before moving to Scotland, he was warden on a nature reserve bordering Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Isles and Ulster's enigmatic geographical heart. His essays explore aspects of the natural world, family, memory, loss and meaning. The Slap and the Salamander, his tenth book, will be published in 2026. His first – Irish Nocturnes – appeared in 1999. After postdoctoral research positions at the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, he taught for many years at the University of Wales. In 2014 he became a Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund. His writing has received various honours, including the Akegarasu Haya Prize, the Monroe K. Spears Essay Prize, a Theodore Christian Hoepfner award, and The Times Higher/Palgrave Macmillan Writing Prize in the Humanities. In 2024 he won the Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Prize

Irish Nocturnes (The Davies Group, 1999)

Irish Willow (The Davies Group, 2002)

Irish Haiku (The Davies Group, 2005)

Irish Elegies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

Words of the Grey Wind (Blackstaff Press, 2009)

On the Shoreline of Knowledge (University of Iowa Press, 2012)

Reading Life (Negative Capability Press, 2017)

Hummingbirds Between the Pages (Ohio State University Press, 2018)

Hidden Cargoes (Eastover Press, 2022)

What is it Like to be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer (Eastover Press, 2024)