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In his latest collection, Hummingbirds Between the Pages, prizewinning Irish essayist Chris Arthur muses on subjects ranging from Charles Darwin's killing of a South American fox to the carnal music sounding in a statue of the Buddha, from how Egyptian seashells contain echoes of World War II to a child's first encounter with death. Whether he's looking at skipping stones, old photographs, butterflies, the resonance of a remembered phrase, or being questioned at an army checkpoint during Northern Ireland's Troubles, what gives these unorthodox meditations their appeal is the way in which-with striking lyricism-they tap into unexpected seams of meaning and mystery in our everyday terrain. Arthur explores the moments that have left him spellbound, tying his own experiences as a young boy from Ulster who saw his first hummingbirds in London to the wonder felt by early settlers to America who sent pressed hummingbirds across the ocean to the communities they had left behind. Through rumination on the seemingly quotidian, Arthur's lyrical prose exposes new layers of possibility just beneath the surface of the expected.
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Chris Arthur is the author of seven previous essay collections, most recently HUMMINGBIRDS BETWEEN THE PAGES (2018) and READING LIFE (2017). He was born in Belfast and grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Following a period working as warden on a nature reserve on the shores of Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Isles and Northern Ireland's enigmatic geographical heart, he went to university in Scotland. After completing his MA and PhD, he spent some time as a TV researcher and then as a schoolteacher, before taking up academic posts at the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews. On being appointed to a lectureship at what was then St David's University College (later the University of Wales, Lampeter), he moved to Welsh-speaking rural Ceredigion and lived there for over a decade before returning to Scotland to concentrate full-time on his writing. In 2014 he became a Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund. His writing has resulted in numerous prizes, including the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award, the Monroe K. Spears Essay Prize, the Akegarasu Haya International Essay Prize, Times Higher/Palgrave Macmillan Writing Prize in the YYUH Humanities, and the Gandhi Foundation's Aitchtey Memorial Essay Prize. Publishers Weekly called Arthur's work "proof that the art of the essay is flourishing," and Robert Atwan described him as "among the very best essayists in the English language today." Further information can be found at www.chrisarthur.org.
