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Professor Maureen Freely made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Maureen FreelyProfessor Maureen Freely of Warwick’s Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL). Best known as the translator of books by the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, Maureen is also the author of six novels and writes regularly on feminism, family and social policy, Turkish culture and politics, and contemporary writing in newspapers including the Guardian and The Independent.

Professor Freely joins the Society's distinguished cohort of some 500 Fellows comprising the very best novelists, short-story writers, poets, playwrights, biographers, historians, travel writers, literary critics and scriptwriters at work today, including Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, and novelists Sebastian Faulks, Sir Salman Rushdie and A.S. Byatt.

The RSL was founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". Its mission is to support and promote the interests of all writers and campaign on issues of literary importance to the nation, including maintaining the teaching of English in schools, the preservation of public libraries and protecting Britain’s literary heritage by lobbying the Heritage Lottery Fund to make more funds available to buy living writers' archives.

As a new Fellow of the RSL, Professor Freely's inauguration will involve signing the Society's roll book using either Dickens' quill or Byron's pen.