Biography
Donal Ryan was born outside Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1976. [4] He holds a degree in law from the University of Limerick, where he now lectures in Creative Writing. [5] He worked for the National Employment Rights Authority until April 2014. [6] He is married and lives in Castletroy, County Limerick, with his wife and two children. [7]
Ryan has won numerous awards for his fiction, among them the European Union Prize for Literature, [8] the Guardian First Book Award [9] and six Irish Book Awards, [10] and has been shortlisted for several more, including the Costa Book Award [11] and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. [12] In September 2021, he became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean-Monnet Prize for European Literature. [13]
His debut novel, The Spinning Heart , was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013, and his fourth novel, From a Low And Quiet Sea, was longlisted in 2018. [14] The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016 in a nationwide poll run by the Dublin Book Festival. [15]
Ryan's first two novels, The Spinning Heart (2012) and The Thing About December (2013), were between them rejected 47 times before being accepted for publication. [16]
The Thing About December (written before The Spinning Heart) was published in 2013 and was adapted into an Irish-language film, Foscadh , in 2020. [17] It was also adapted for the stage by Decadent Theatre Company in 2019. [18] The Spinning Heart was adapted by Articulate Anatomy Theatre Company in 2017 and staged at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. [19]
Ryan's books have been translated into more than twenty languages. [20]
In June 2025, he won the Orwell Prize for political fiction for his novel Heart, Be at Peace. [21]
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