Edna O’Brien was born in County Clare, educated by the Sisters of Mercy in Galway and graduated as a pharmacist before going on to write her first controversial novel, The Country Girls, in 1960. Since then she has written over twenty-five books, including Wild Decembers, In the Forest, a biography of James Joyce and most recently, Byron in Love. Her plays include A Pagan Place (Royal Court, London), Virginia (on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf, Haymarket, London), Iphigenia (Crucible, Sheffield), Our Father (Almeida, London), Family Butchers (Magic Theatre, San Francisco), Triptych (Southwark Playhouse, London) and Haunted (Royal Exchange, Manchester). Awards include Yorkshire Post, Los Angeles Times, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Irish PEN, the European Prize for Literature, Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin and the American National Arts Gold Medal. In 2011, Edna has been awarded the Frank O’ Connor International Short Story Award for Saints and Sinners.
