Julian Gough

Julian was born in London, raised in Tipperary, in rural Ireland, and educated in Galway on Ireland's Atlantic coast. (In answer to your most frequently asked question: Gough rhymes with cough.) He is also the author of three previous novels, two BBC radio plays, a successful stage play, and the ending to Time Magazine’s 2011 computer game of the year, Minecraft, which has sold over 300 million copies. His most charming novel is Juno & Juliet. His funniest, oddest (and most prize-winning) novel is Jude in Ireland (originally known as Jude: Level 1). It concerns a young Irish orphan's search for true love. His most exciting novel is the near-future science fiction thriller Connect. 2016 saw the publication of his first children's book, Rabbit's Bad Habits, which Neil Gaiman called "a laugh-out-loud story", and Eoin Colfer called "an instant modern classic". The award-winning artist Jim Field provided the marvellous pictures. Five more Rabbit & Bear books, also illustrated by Jim Field, have followed. Translated into thirty-eight languages, they have been shortlisted for many awards in the UK and Ireland, including two Irish Book of the Year awards. In 2018, Rabbit & Bear: The Pest in the Nest won France's Prix Livrentête: a prize voted for by thousands of children across the country. He won the largest prize in the world for a single short story (the BBC National Short Story Award) in 2007, and was shortlisted for the Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize in 2008, and again in 2011, for his linked novels Jude in Ireland, and Jude in London. His poetry collection, Free Sex Chocolate, was published in 2010. In 2013, he had a UK number one Kindle Single with the comic novella CRASH! In his youth, Gough sang with underground literary pop band Toasted Heretic. They released four albums, and had a top ten hit with the single "Galway and Los Angeles". He now lives in Berlin. Feel free to say hello to him on Twitter, or through his website. He is currently writing a non-fiction book about the universe in public, online, and would welcome your feedback. It is called The Egg and the Rock, and is excellent. Amazon won't let authors include website addresses here, but you can probably work it out. (Yes, it's The Egg and the Rock dot com, but with no spaces.)