A CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED author has been confirmed as the University of Reading's first Beckett Creative Fellow, and will be undertaking a new piece of work inspired by Samuel Beckett.

Eimear McBride, who recently won a James Tait Black Prize for her novel 'The Lesser Bohemians', will have unique access to the University's internationally-recognised Beckett Archive.

She said: "It is a tremendous honour and pleasure to be the inaugural holder of the Samuel Beckett Creative Fellowship."

McBride's debut novel 'A Girl is a Half-formed Thing' won the 2013 Goldsmiths Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2014.

The Beckett Archive will allow her access to the largest collection of publicly accessible materials on the Irish novelist, poet and playwright.

Professor Steven Matthews, director of the Beckett Research Centre, added: "We are so pleased that the centre will give birth to an original piece of work which will have threads of Beckett's own writing running through it."