Elected: 2018
Year of birth: 1973
Ben Markovits left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics – an experience he wrote about in Playing Days. Since then he has published eight novels, including Either Side of Winter, about a New York private school, and a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron. You Don’t Have To Live Like This, about an experimental community in Detroit, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. A Weekend in New York is published by Faber in summer 2018.
Fellows are nominated by peers and elected by our Council of writers – our governing Board. Being elected a Fellow of the RSL is a lifetime honour. This role gives them the opportunity to support other writers, readers and the future of literature. The RSL connects writers in the Fellowship to one another, and to a wider readership.
