Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, and educated at University College Dublin. He spent the early 80s as editor of Magill, a monthly news magazine. He continues to write for journals and newspapers, including the London Review of Books, the Guardian, the Dublin Review and the New York Review of Books. He is the author of several novels, including The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize, and The Master, winner of the 2006 IMPAC award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Brooklyn was published by Viking in 2009. Tóibín has also published two collections of short stories, Mothers and Sons and, most recently, The Empty Family. He has written and edited a number of non-fiction books, including Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona and The Sign of the Cross and was awarded the E. M. Forster Award in 1995. The novella, The Testament of Mary (Scribner, 2012) was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. Colm Tóibín is a member of Aosdána and lives in Dublin city. For more information, visit his website: http://www.colmtoibin.com.