William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) bro…
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Su…
Pat Barker is an English writer known for her fiction exploring themes of memory, trauma, and survival. She gained prominence with Union Street (1982), a stark portrayal of working-class women's lives…
Kate Chopin was an American author whose fiction grew out of the complex cultures and contradictions of Louisiana life, and she gradually became one of the most distinctive voices in nineteenth centur…
Roddy Doyle (Irish: Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Bo…
Sean O'Casey was born in 1880 and lived through a bitterly hard boyhood in a Dublin tenement house. He never went to school but received most of his education in the streets of Dublin, and taught hims…
Shirley Jackson was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as S…
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre i…
Marina Carr was brought up in County Offaly. A graduate of University College Dublin, she has written extensively for the theatre. She has taught at Villanova, Princeton, and currently teaches in the …
Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems "On Raglan Road" and "The G…
Babitz was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of Mae, an artist, and Sol, a classical violinist on contract with 20th Century Fox.Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother had C…
Early association with the Irish republican army and experiences in prison influenced works, including The Quare Fellow, the play of 1954, and the autobiographical Borstal Boy in 1958 of Brend…
George Gordon Byron (invariably known as Lord Byron), later Noel, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale FRS was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief…
Maria Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish gentry-woman, a daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, born in Oxfordshire and later resettling in County Longford. She eventually took over the management of her fat…
John Kingsley ("Joe") Orton was an English playwright. In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death in 1967, he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black co…
Greenwood was born in Hanky Park, in Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire, the son of radical working class parents. His father died when he was nine, and his mother supported him by working as a waitress. …
Born Françoise Quoirez, Sagan grew up in a French Catholic, bourgeois family. She was an independent thinker and avid reader as a young girl, and upon failing her examinations for continuing at the So…
Novels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include Murphy in 1938 and Malone Dies in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as Waiting for Godot in 1952 and Krapp's …
Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Norwegian playwright largely responsible for the rise of modern realistic drama. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama." Ibsen is held to be the greates…
Tom Murphy (born 1935) is an Irish dramatist who has worked closely with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and with Druid Theatre, Galway. Born in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, he currently lives in Dublin.…
Michael Magee was born and grew up in West Belfast. He is the fiction editor of The Tangerine, and his work has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, and The Lifeboat, and in The 32: An Antholo…
