Mícheál Ó hAodha was born in 1969. His poems are collected in the dual-language Survivor/Dúchas Dóchasach: Representations of the New Irish ([with paintings by Jean ‘Ryan’ Hakizimana] Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2007); and Slán le hÉirinn (Baile Átha Cliath, Coscéim, 2012). He writes fiction as well as poetry and has translated extensively from Irish, including […]
Declan Collinge was born in Dublin. His poetry collections are Sealgaireacht (Báile Átha Cliath, Clóchomhar Teo, 1982); Faoi Léigear (Báile Átha Cliath, Coiscéim, 1986); Fearful Symmetry (Dublin, Mentor Books 1990); Common Ground (Inisfail Press, 1996); Teachtaireacht Téacsa (Coiscéim 2007); and The Lonely Hush of Eve/ Tost Uaigneach na hOíche: Selected and New Poems/Rogha Dánta agus […]
Tom Paulin was born in Leeds in 1949 but grew up in Belfast. His poetry collections include A State Of Justice (London, Faber & Faber, 1977); The Strange Museum (Faber & Faber, 1980); Liberty Tree Faber & Faber, 1983); Fivemiletown, Faber & Faber, 1987); Walking A Line (Faber & Faber 1994); The Wind Dog (Faber […]
Chris Arthur was born in Belfast in 1955, and lived for many years in Lisburn, County Antrim. His three books of essays are Irish Nocturnes (Aurora, Colorado, The Davies Group, 1999); Irish Willow (The Davies Group, 2002); and Irish Haiku (The Davies Group, 2005). Excerpts from Irish Nocturnes, Irish Willow and Irish Haiku can be […]
Maeve Binchy was born in Dublin in 1940. Her story collections are Central Line (Dublin, Ward River Press, 1977/London, Quartet, 1978); Victoria Line (Ward River Press/Quartet, 1980); Dublin 4 (Ward River Press/London, Century, 1983); and The Lilac Bus (Ward River Press, 1984/Century, 1986). Her novels are Light A Penny Candle (London, Century, 1982/New York, Viking, […]
John Broderick was born in Athlone in 1924. His novels include The Pilgrimage (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1961), published in the U.S. as The Chameleons (N.Y. Ivan Obolensky, 1961); The Fugitives (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1962); Don Juaneen (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1963); The Waking of Willie Ryan (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1965); An Apology […]
Hubert Butler was born in Kilkenny in 1900. He is recognized as the most distinctive Irish essayists, writing in the highest traditions of Swift and Shaw. His essays reflect his experiences in pre-war Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Latvia, Russia and China, as well as Ireland. In 1933/34 he translated and adapted Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard […]
Joyce Cary was born Arthur Joyce Lunel in Derry City in 1888, the family home being Castle Cary in Inishowen, Co Donegal. He settled in Oxford in 1920, having been wounded during World War I. His Novels include Aissa Saved (London, Ernest Benn 1932); An American Visitor (Ernest Benn 1933); The African Witch (London, Victor […]
Anthony Cronin was born in Co Wexford in 1928. His many works include the novels The Life of Riley (London, Secker & Warburg, 1964); and Identity Papers (Dublin, Co-Op Books, 1980). His collections of poems are Poems (London, Cresset, 1958); Collected Poems, 1950-73 (Dublin, New Writers Press, 1973); Reductionist Poem (Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1980); […]
Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952. His poetry collections are Sheltering Places (1978); The Lundys Letter (Loughcrew, The Gallery Press, 1987), for which he was awarded the Macauley Fellowship in Literature; Sunday School (The Gallery Press, 1991); Heart of Hearts (The Gallery Press, 1995); The Morning Train (The Gallery Press, 1999) Lake Geneva […]
Cecil Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, County Laois, in 1904. After his mother died in 1906, his father brought him to London, and was raised by his father and an aunt. Summers were spent with relatives in Co Wexford. In Oxford he met Auden and became part of his circle, helping Auden to edit Oxford […]
Maria Edgeworth was born on New Year’s Day 1767, at Blackbourton, Oxfordshire. In 1782 she settled in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford with her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who was himself born in Bath, although the family had settled in Ireland in Elizabethan times. She acted as his chief assistant and secretary in the management of his […]
Desmond Fennell was born in Belfast in 1929 and grew up in Dublin. His books are Mainly in Wonder (London, Hutchinson, 1959); The Changing Face of Catholic Ireland (Dublin, Chapman, 1968); The State of the Nation: Ireland since the 60s (Swords, Ward River Press, 1983); Beyond Nationalism: The Struggle against Provincialism in the Modern World (Swords, Ward River Press, […]
Gabriel Fitzmaurice was born in Moyvane, Co Kerry, in 1952. A former Chair and Literary Advisor of Writers’ Week, the Writers’ Conference in Listowel, Co. Kerry, he is author of more than twenty books, including poetry in English and Irish, children’s verse in English and Irish, translations from the Irish, essays, and collections of songs […]
Oliver Goldsmith was born on November 10th, 1730. His birthplace is disputed but it is most probably Pallasmore, Co. Longford. At the age of eight he had a severe attack of smallpox which disfigured him for life. He received a B.A. degree in February 1749 from Trinity College Dublin, before he left Ireland in 1752 […]
Nuala O’Faolain was born in Dublin in 1940. Her autobiographical books are Are You Somebody? (Dublin, New Island Books, 1996/New York, Owl Books, Henry Holt and Company, 1996), which became an international bestseller; and its sequel Almost There: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman (Riverhead Books/London, Michael Joseph, 2003). Her novels are My Dream […]
Eamon Grennan was born in Dublin in 1941. His poetry collections are Wildly for Days (Oldcastle, Co Meath, Gallery Press, 1983); What Light There Is (Gallery Press, 1987); So It Goes (Gallery Press, 1995); Selected and New Poems (Gallery Press, 2000); Still Life with Waterfall (Gallery Press, 2001); The Quick of It (Gallery Press, 2004); […]
James Hanley claimed he was born in Dublin on 3 September 1901, but was actually born in Liverpool in 1897 to Irish parents. His novel Boy was the subject of an obscenity charge in Manchester in early 1936 – to which his publishers pleaded guilty and were heavily fined. The book was withdrawn and all […]
Trudy Hayes was born in Dublin in 1962. Her stories are anthologized in Virgins and Hyacinths (Dublin, The Attic Press) and Ireland’s Women – Writings Past and Present (Dublin, Gill & MacMillan, 1994). She is also the author of The Politics of Seduction (The Attic Press, 1990). Her plays include Out Of My Head, which […]
Seamus Heaney was born in Derry in 1939. His bibliography is vast, his work encompassing poetry, criticism, theatre and translation. His major poetry collections are Death of a Naturalist (London, Faber and Faber, 1966); Door Into the Dark (London, Faber and Faber, 1969); Wintering Out (London, Faber and Faber, 1972); North (London, Faber and Faber, […]
Kevin Higgins was born in London in 1967, but grew up in Galway City. His collections are The Boy With No Face (The Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare, Salmon Poetry, 2005); Time Gentlemen, Please (Salmon Poetry, 2008); and Frightening New Furniture (Salmon Poetry, 2010). With his wife Susan Millar DuMars, he organises the Over The […]
Peter Jankowsky was born in Berlin in 1939. He studied acting in Berlin and worked for ten years with a number of German theatre companies. He settled in Dublin in 1971, having visited Ireland since the 1950s. His poetry translations include (with Brian Lynch) Paul Celan: 65 Poems (Raven Arts Press, 1986); Davoren Hanna: Unüblice […]
John Jordan was born in Dublin in 1930. His poetry collections are Patrician Stations (Dublin, New Writers Press, 1971); A Raft from Flotsam (Dublin, The Gallery Press, 1975); Blood and Stations ([verse and autobiographical prose] The Gallery Press, 1976); With Whom Did I Share the Crystal (Meath, St Beuno’s, 1980); Collected Poems ([ed. with preface […]
Patrick Kavanagh was born in Inniskeen, County Monaghan in 1904. His poetry volumes are Ploughman & Other Poems (London, MacMillan Contemporary Poets Series, 1936); The Great Hunger (Dublin, The Cuala Press, 1942, Limited Edition); A Soul for Sale (MacMillan, 1947); Recent Poems (New York, The Peter Kavanagh Hand Press, 1958); Come Dance with Kitty Stobling […]
John B. Keane was born in Listowel, Co Kerry in 1928. He published forty-six works, but is best known for his plays which inlcude Sive; Sharon’s Grave; The Man from Clare; The Year of the Hiker; The Field (which was adapted as a film of the same name); Many Young Men of Twenty; Big Maggie; […]
Thomas Lynch is an essayist, poet and director of Lynch & Sons funeral home in Milford, Michigan, where he was born in 1948. His poetry collections are Skating With Heather Grace (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1987); Grimalkin & Other Poems (London, Jonathan Cape, 1994); Still Life in Milford (Jonathan Cape, 1998/New York, W. W. […]
Thomas McGonigle was born of Donegal ancestry in Patchogue, Long Island, New York in 1944, and has had a deep connection with Ireland since 1964. His novels are Going to Patchogue (Champaign, IL, Dalkey Archive Press, 1992); and The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov (Dalkey Archive Press, 1987/Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 2000). His novel […]
Hugh Maxton (pseudonym of W.J. McCormack) was born near Aughrim in Co Wicklow in 1947. He lived intermittently in Hungary over a period of ten years, and has published translations into English of poems by Agnes Nemes Nagy, Sándor Wéöres, and Endre Ady. His poetry as Hugh Maxton includes Stones (Dublin, Allen Figgis, 1970); The […]
John Montague was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929 and reared on the family farm in Co Tyrone. His poetry includes Forms of Exile (1958); Poisoned Lands (Dublin, The Dolmen Press, 1961, 1977); A Chosen Light (1967); Tides (The Dolmen Press, 1971); (The Rough Field (Dolmen, 1972); A Slow Dance (Dolmen, 1975); The Great […]
George Augustus Moore was born on February 24, 1852 in County Mayo. His collections of stories include In Single Strictness (London, Heinemann, 1922/ New York, Boni & Liveright., 1922); Celibates, London (Walter Scott/ New York, Macmillan, 1895); and The Untilled Field (London, T Fisher Unwin, 1903/Philadelphia, Lippincott). An t-Ur Gort (Dublin, Sealy, Bryers and Walker, […]
Helena Mulkerns was born in Dublin but has lived abroad for much of her life. Her last posting was in Kabul with the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan in 2007. She was nominated for the Sunday Tribune Hennessy Literary Awards in 1991. She has published a total of fifteen short stories since then, and has […]
Paul Muldoon was born in Co Armagh in 1951. His main works are New Weather (London: Faber & Faber, 1973); Mules (Faber & Faber and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Wake Forest University Press, 1977); Immram (Dublin, Gallery Press, 1980); Why Brownlee Left (London: Faber/Wake Forest, 1980) ; Out of Siberia (Gallery Press, 1982); Quoof (Faber/Wake Forest, […]
Michael Murphy was born in Liverpool in 1965. His poetry collections are After Attila (Nottingham, Shoestring Press, 1998), Elsewhere (Shoestring Press, 2003), and Allotments (Shoestring Press, 2008.) In 2001 he won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, awarded by Poetry Review to the New Poet of the Year, and his poems are included in The New Irish […]
Paul Murphy was born in Belfast in 1965. He has published one collection, In the Luxembourg Gardens (Salzburg, Poetry Salzburg, 1992), and T.S. Eliot’s Postmodernist Complaint (Brisbane, PostPressed), a book a book on TS Eliot and Jacques Lacan. Also an artist, he is presently living in Germany. Paul Murphy’s book on TS Eliot and Jacques […]
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill was born in Lancashire in 1952, of Irish parents, and was brought up in the Dingle Gaeltacht and in Nenagh, Co Tipperary. Her collections include An Dealg Droighin (Cork, Mercier Press 1981); Féar Suaithinseach (Baile Átha Cliath, An Sagart, 1984); Rogha Dánta/Selected Poems ([translated by Michael Hartnett] Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1986); […]
Sean O’Casey was born John Casey in Dublin in 1880. His major plays are his Three Dublin Plays: The Shadow of a Gunman (Dublin, The Abbey Theatre, 1923), Juno and the Paycock (The Abbey Theatre, 1924), and The Plough and the Stars (The Abbey Theatre, 1926); and The Silver Tassie (London, 1929). The Plough and […]
Dennis O’Driscoll was born in Thurles, Co Tipperary, in 1954. A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review, he was one of Ireland’s most widely published and respected critics of poetry. His poetry volumes include Kist (Mountrath, Dolmen Press, 1982); Hidden Extras (London, Anvil Press Poetry/Dublin, The Dedalus Press, 1987); Long Story Short (Anvil Press Poetry/ […]
Michael O’Loughlin was born in Dublin in 1958. His poetry collections are Stalingrad: The Street Dictionary (Dublin, Raven Press, 1980); Atlantic Blues (Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1982); The Diary of a Silence (Raven Arts Press, 1985); Another Nation, New & Selected Poems (Dublin, New Island Books, 1994/UK Arc Publications, 1996); and In This Life (New […]
James Plunkett (James Plunkett Kelly) was born in Dublin in 1920. As well as fiction, he wrote radio and television features, and film scripts. Big Jim (Dublin, O’Donnell, 1955), on the life of the trade unionist Jim Larkin, was commissioned by Radio Éireann. His main work includes the short story collections The Trusting and the […]
Rosemarie Rowley was born in Dublin in 1942. Her poetry publications include The Broken Pledge (Dublin, Tallaght, 1985); The Sea of Affliction (Dublin, Rowan Tree Press, 1987); Flight into Reality (Rowan Tree Press, 1989), a long poem written terza rima and issued, read by the poet, on audio cassette in 1996; Hot Cinquefoil Star (Rowan […]
George Bernard Shaw was born in 1856 at 33 Synge Street, Dublin. His place of birth is now a museum in his honour. His novels include Immaturity (composed and serialized, 1879, published 1931, cf below); The Irrational Knot (serialized in Our Corner between April, 1885, and February, 1887.cf below); Love Among the Artists (serialized, 1887-1888, […]
Jonathan Swift was born on the 30 November 1667, at 7 Hoey’s Court, Dublin. His father, according to the Cabinet of Irish Literature, was a full cousin of the poet Dryden. His mother moved back to her home in England after her husband’s death, but Swift stayed in Dublin with an uncle, entering Kilkenny Grammar […]
Eamonn Wall was born in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford in 1955. He has published two chapbooks, The Tame Goose (New York, The Hale Press, 1990); and Fire Escape (New York, Sunken-Isle Press, 1988). His poetry is collected as Dyckman – 200th Street (Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare, Salmon Publishing, 1994); Iron Mountain Road (Salmon Publishing 1997); […]
William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. With Lady Gregory and others, he founded the Irish Literary Theatre, from which developed the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1896. His poetry includes Mosada (Dublin, Sealy, Bryers & Walker, 1886); The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (London, Kegan Paul, 1889) Crossways, 1889; The […]
