Michael Parker is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Central Lancashire, and in 2012 held the post of Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. His publications include Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet (Macmillan, 1993), The Hurt World: Short Stories of the Troubles (Blackstaff, 1995), Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories, co-edited with Liam Harte (Macmillan, 2000), Northern Irish Literature: The Imprint of History 1956-2006 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and Irish Literature Since 1990: Diverse Voices, co-edited with Scott Brewster (Manchester University Press 2009). His next major publication will be Seamus Heaney: Legacies, Afterlives (Palgrave Macmillan), a comprehensive analysis of Heaney’s poetry, translations, drama and critical writing, due out in 2014.  With his wife, Aleksandra  Parker, he is currently translating Andrzej Franaszek’s Czeslaw Milosz: Biografia for the Ecco Press.