Mark O'Connell (writer)

Last updated

Mark O'Connell (born 23 June 1979) is an Irish author and journalist. His debut book, To Be A Machine, was published in 2017, followed by Notes From an Apocalypse in 2020. His third book, A Thread of Violence, was published in 2023. He has written for publications including The New Yorker , The New York Times Magazine , The New York Review of Books , and The Guardian . He is also the author of the Kindle Single Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever (Byliner/The Millions), [1] as well as an academic study of the novels of John Banville. [2]

Contents

Education and personal life

O’Connell was born in Kilkenny in 1979, [3] and grew up there. [4] His father worked as a pharmacist. O’Connell has an older brother and a younger sister. He studied English at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), completed a PhD in the novels of John Banville, and graduated in 2011. He lives in Dublin.

Major works

In 2017, O'Connell published To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death (ISBN 9781783781973). Described by the New York Times Book Review as "a gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality", [5] it is an investigation of transhumanism. It was the winner of the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, [6] and the Rooney Prize in 2019. [7]

O'Connell's second book, published in 2020, is Notes From an Apocalypse (OCLC: 1097672923). [8] An investigative and deeply personal book about apocalyptic anxieties, it was described by Esquire as "deeply funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the most challenging of subjects." [8]

His third book, A Thread of Violence (ISBN 9780385547628), about the Irish murderer Malcolm Macarthur, was published in 2023.

Essays

O'Connell has written noteworthy essays for The New York Times Magazine on the subjects of pessimism and parenthood, [9] and the TV show "Game of Thrones", [10] and for The Guardian on turning 40, and the benefits of isolation. [11]

Awards

O'Connell has been awarded the Wellcome Book Prize [12] and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. [7] To Be a Machine was a finalist for the 2017 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize [13] and was shortlisted for the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

Adaptations

In 2020, it was announced that a theatrical adaptation of To Be a Machine was to be performed as part of Dublin Theatre Festival. Titled To Be a Machine (Version 1.0), the adaptation by theatre company Dead Centre saw O'Connell's character played by Jack Gleeson. Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the performance was online only, with audience members uploading themselves into the theatre. [14]

Bibliography

———————

Notes
  1. Online version is titled "Cartoon Saloon and the new Golden Age of animation".

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zadie Smith</span> British novelist, essayist, and short-story writer (born 1975)

Zadie Smith FRSL is a British novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colson Whitehead</span> American novelist (born 1969)

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Banville</span> Irish writer, also writes as Benjamin Black (born 1945)

William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Gray (philosopher)</span> English political philosopher (born 1948)

John Nicholas Gray is an English political philosopher and author with interests in analytic philosophy, the history of ideas, and philosophical pessimism. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer. He is an atheist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Ball</span> American novelist and poet

Jesse Ball is an American novelist and poet. He has published novels, volumes of poetry, short stories, and drawings. His works are distinguished by the use of a spare style and have been compared to those of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.

Desmond Hogan is an Irish writer. Awarded the 1977 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and 1980 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, his oeuvre comprises novels, plays, short stories and travel writing.

The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature was created in 1976 by the Irish American businessman Dan Rooney, owner and chairman of the NFL Pittsburgh Steelers franchise and former US Ambassador to Ireland. The prize is awarded to Irish writers aged under 40 who are published in Irish or English. Although often associated with individual books, it is intended to reward a body of work. Originally worth £750, the current value of the prize is €10,000.

Declan Kiberd is an Irish writer and scholar with an interest in modern Irish literature, both in the English and Irish languages, which he often approaches through the lens of postcolonial theory. He is also interested in the academic study of children's literature. He serves on the advisory board of the International Review of Irish Culture and is a professor at the University of Notre Dame and at its campus in Dublin. In recent years and with publications such as After Ireland (2018), Kiberd has become a commentator on contemporary Irish social and political issues, particularly as such issues have been examined by Ireland's writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Russell</span> American writer (born 1981)

Karen Russell is an American novelist and short story writer. Her debut novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2009 the National Book Foundation named Russell a 5 under 35 honoree. She was also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Sheridan</span>

Peter Sheridan is an Irish playwright, screenwriter and director. He lives in Dublin. His awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. In 1980 he was writer-in-residence in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and his short film, The Breakfast, won several European awards. He wrote the pilot episode of Fair City. He wrote and directed the film Borstal Boy, which was released in 2002. He is the brother of the film director Jim Sheridan.

Tana French is an American-Irish writer and theatrical actress. She is a longtime resident of Dublin, Ireland. Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel. The Independent has referred to her as "the First Lady of Irish Crime".

The Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize is an annual British literary prize inaugurated in 1977. It is named after the host Jewish Quarterly and the prize's founder Harold Hyam Wingate. The award recognises Jewish and non-Jewish writers resident in the UK, British Commonwealth, Europe and Israel who "stimulate an interest in themes of Jewish concern while appealing to the general reader". As of 2011 the winner receives £4,000.

Sara Baume is an Irish novelist. She was named on Granta magazine's "Best of Young British Novelists" list 2023.

<i>To Be a Machine</i> 2017 nonfiction book by Mark OConnell

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death is a 2017 nonfiction book by Slate columnist and literary journalist Mark O'Connell. The book is a breezy, but skeptical, gonzo-journalistic tour of transhumanism and radical life extension. It chronicles O'Connell's travels around the world to interview prominent transhumanists.

Halle Butler is an American author. She grew up in Bloomington, Illinois and lives in Chicago. After co-writing two independent films, Butler published her first novel, Jillian in 2015. Her second novel, The New Me was released in 2019. Butler was recognised as one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists and honored as one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Rooney</span> Irish author

Sally Rooney is an Irish author and screenwriter. She has published three novels: Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021). The first two were adapted into the television miniseries Normal People (2020) and Conversations with Friends (2022).

Sarah Moss is an English writer and academic. She has published six novels, as well as a number of non-fiction works and academic texts. Her work has been nominated three times for the Wellcome Book Prize. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin's School of English, Drama and Film in the Republic of Ireland with effect from September 2020.

<i>Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead</i> 2009 crime novel by Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a 2009 mystery novel by Olga Tokarczuk. Originally published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Literackie, it was later translated to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and published in 2018 by the British independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions. The book received a wider release in 2019 when it was published in the United States by Riverhead Books on 13 August 2019. A portion of the English translation was originally published in literary magazine Granta in 2017.

John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. He has won the Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature; has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; knighted by Italy; is one of the most acclaimed writers in the English language.

<i>Notes from an Apocalypse</i> 2020 non-fiction book by Mark OConnell

Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back is a 2020 non-fiction book by Irish writer Mark O'Connell.

References

  1. O'Connell, Mark (July 2015). Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever. The Millions.
  2. O'Connell, M. (2013). John Banville's Narcissistic Fictions: The Spectral Self. Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN   978-0-230-36170-6.
  3. "Q&A with author Mark O'Connell". Financial Times . 4 May 2018. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  4. Keane, Sean (24 September 2019). "Kilkenny man wins second major literary award for amazing book". www.kilkennypeople.ie. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  5. "To Be a Machine by Mark O'Connell: 9781101911594 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  6. "Mark O'Connell wins Wellcome Book Prize 2018 | Wellcome". wellcome.org. 30 April 2018. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  7. 1 2 "Mark O'Connell wins Rooney Prize for Irish Literature". RTÉ.ie. 24 September 2019.
  8. 1 2 "Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O'Connell: 9780385543002 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  9. O’Connell, Mark (1 August 2014). "Can Parenthood and Pessimism Live Side by Side?". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  10. O’Connell, Mark (15 April 2019). "What I Learned on My Vacation to Westeros". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  11. O’Connell, Mark (24 January 2020). "Splendid isolation: how I stopped time by sitting in a forest for 24 hours". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  12. "Mark O'Connell wins Wellcome Book Prize 2018 | Wellcome". wellcome.org. 30 April 2018. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  13. "2017 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  14. "What happens next - Dublin Theatre Festival reinvents itself". RTÉ.ie. 18 August 2020.