Joseph O'Connor

Joseph O'ConnorJoseph O’Connor’s 2019 novel Shadowplay won the Eason/An Post Irish Novel of the Year Award. was shortlisted for five further prizes across France, Ireland and the UK, including the Costa Novel Award 2020, and is a 2020 selection on the UK’s Richard and Judy Christmas Book List. He is the author of eighteen books, including the novels Cowboys and Indians, Desperadoes, The Salesman, Inishowen, Redemption Falls, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One Book choice 2011) and The Thrill of it All, two collections of short stories, True Believers and Where Have You Been?, a number of stage plays, radio plays, film scripts and adaptations, six non-fiction books and hundreds of radio diaries. He has performed spoken-word pieces with many musicians, including The Chieftains, Paul Brady, Sam Amidon, Camille O’Sullivan, Martin Hayes and the orchestra of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and has given readings at the Royal Albert Hall, the Barbican London, the National Concert Hall and the Lincoln Centre New York. He is Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.His novel Star of the Sea has sold more than a million copies. A New York Times bestseller and the UK Sunday Times number one bestseller for nine weeks, it has been published in 40 languages. In 2011, he won the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature, was conferred with an Honorary PhD by UCD and was elected to membership of Aosdána. Other awards include the Macaulay Fellowship, the Hennessy Hall of Fame Literary Award, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, an American Library Association Award, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, the Irish Post Award, Hot Press Irish Writer of the Decade, and the Prix Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year. He has been Harman Visiting Professor at Baruch College, City University of New York, and a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.