Colm Tóibín

Colm Toibin was born in Ireland in 1955. His novels are The South (winner of Irish Times/ Aer Lingus First Fiction award; shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award); The Heather Blazing (winner of the Encore Prize); The Story of the Night (winner of the Ferro/Grumley Prize; shortlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger); The Blackwater Lightship (shortlisted for the Booker Prize, made into film starring Angela Lansbury and Dianne Wiest); The Master (winner of the LA Times Novel of the Year, the Dublin IMPAC Prize and the Prix du Meilleur Livre, shortlisted for the Booker Prize); Brooklyn (winner of the Costa Prize for Best Novel); The Testament of Mary (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and Nora Webster (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year).

His play The Testament of Mary was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 2013. His collection of stories Mothers and Sons won the Edge Hill Prize, and his second collection The Empty Family was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award.

Tóibín has twice been a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University; he has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Manchester University and Princeton. He has been Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He served on the Arts Council in Ireland between 2006 and 2013. He is Chairman of PEN World Voices Festival in New York and a member of the Board of Druid Theatre.

Tóibín has been a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, a member of the Royal Society of Literature and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Ulster, University College Dublin and the University of East Anglia. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.

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