Laureate for Irish Fiction coming to UCD

The Laureate for Irish Fiction, the acclaimed novelist Sebastian Barry, will be coming to UCD to work with creative writing students and faculty from January 2019 for 12 weeks. He will be based in the University and working with students through one-to-one consultations and seminars and workshops, passing on his experience as a novelist with a deep and long-term commitment to literature and writing. 

Professor Ian Davidson, Head of Creative Writing at UCD, said ‘We are absolutely delighted to welcome Sebastian Barry to UCD to work with the students on our creative writing programmes. They will gain immensely from his experience as a writer of important novels that have added to our awareness of the importance of fiction, and received many major awards.’

Sebastian Barry has been an extraordinarily successful novelist. His novel A Long Long Way (Faber and Faber) appeared in 2005, and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Impac Prize. The Secret Scripture, a novel, was published in 2008, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the LA Times Book Awards, and won the Costa Book of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year. Days Without End was published by Faber in 2016 and won the Costa Book of the Year Award and The Walter Scott Prize, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

The Laureate for Irish Fiction is an initiative of the Arts Council and is run in partnership with University College Dublin and New York University.

The role seeks to acknowledge the contribution of fiction writers to Irish artistic and cultural life by honouring an established Irish writer of fiction, encouraging a new generation of writers, promoting Irish literature nationally and internationally and encouraging the public to engage with Irish fiction.