Paul Murray (author)

Last updated

Paul Murray
Born1975 (age 48–49)
Dublin, Ireland
OccupationWriter
Alma mater Trinity College, Dublin; University of East Anglia
Period2003–present
GenreComic fiction

Paul Murray (born 1975) is an Irish novelist, the author of the novels An Evening of Long Goodbyes , Skippy Dies , The Mark and the Void , and The Bee Sting .

Contents

Biography

Murray was born in Dublin in 1975, the son of a professor of Anglo-Irish Drama at University College Dublin and a teacher. [1] Murray attended Blackrock College in south Dublin, an experience that would later provide the basis for the school in Skippy Dies. He studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently completed his master's in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. He also spent time in Barcelona as an English teacher, a time he did not enjoy, describing it as "a brief and unhappy stint teaching English to a Catalan businessman, who pointed out many faults in my grammar I had not known about hitherto". [2] He describes Gravity's Rainbow as "really inspiring for me when I was younger because it was a bridge between the world of literature and the world of pop culture." [3]

Novels

Murray has written four novels: his first, An Evening of Long Goodbyes , was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Prize in 2003 [4] and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. His second novel, Skippy Dies , was longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize [5] [6] and shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. It was also #3 on Time magazine's top ten works of fiction from 2010. His third novel, The Mark and the Void, was one of Time's top ten best fiction books for 2015, and joint winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize in 2016.

His most recent novel, The Bee Sting , was published in 2023. Described as "a tragicomic triumph" [7] and a source of "pure page-turning pleasure" [8] in The Guardian , it was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, [9] [10] won an Irish Book Award as 2023 Novel of the Year, [11] and won the inaugural £30,000 Nero Gold prize for the 2023 Book of the Year. [12]

Metal Heart

Murray wrote the screenplay for 2018 Irish film Metal Heart , which was directed by Hugh O'Conor. [13] [14]

List of works

Personal life

Murray lives in Dublin with his wife and son. [15]

Related Research Articles

William Trevor Cox, known by his pen name William Trevor, was an Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Miller (novelist)</span> British novelist

Andrew Brooke Miller FRSL is an English novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Costa Book Awards</span> Former annual literary awards

The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then a brewery and owner of restaurant chains, it was renamed when Costa Coffee, then a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship. The companion Costa Short Story Award was established in 2012. Costa Coffee was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 2018. The awards were abruptly terminated in 2022.

The Plimpton Prize is an annual award of $10,000 given by The Paris Review to a previously unpublished or emerging author who has written a work of fiction that was recently published in its publication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Keegan</span> Irish writer (born 1968)

Claire Keegan is an Irish writer known for her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Enright</span> Irish writer (born 1962)

Anne Teresa Enright is an Irish writer. The first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015–2018) and winner of the Man Booker Prize (2007), she has published seven novels, many short stories, and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children. Her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian. Her fiction explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the United Kingdom's first literary award for comic literature. Established in 2000 and named in honour of P. G. Wodehouse, past winners include Paul Torday in 2007 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Marina Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian 2005 and Jasper Fforde for The Well of Lost Plots in 2004. Gary Shteyngart was the first American winner in 2011.

Paul Torday was a British writer and the author of the comic novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. The book was the winner of the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing and was serialised on BBC Radio 4. It won the Waverton Good Read Award in 2008. It was made into feature film in 2011, starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrés Neuman</span> Argentine writer (born 1977)

Andrés Neuman is an Argentine writer, poet, translator, columnist and blogger.

The Irish Book Awards are Irish literary awards given annually to books and authors in various categories. It is the only literary award supported by all-Irish bookstores. The primary sponsor is An Post, the state owned postal service in Ireland.

Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list and both a children's list and an upmarket crime list, and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, crime fiction and suspense, and children's titles.

<i>Skippy Dies</i> Novel by Paul Murray

Skippy Dies is a 2010 tragicomic novel by Paul Murray. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Awards, longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Anuradha Roy is an Indian novelist, journalist and editor. She has written five novels: An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008), The Folded Earth (2011), Sleeping on Jupiter (2015), All the Lives We Never Lived (2018), and The Earthspinner (2021).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diana Evans</span> British novelist, journalist and critic (born 1972)

Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written four full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. A House for Alice was published in 2023.

<i>If I Survive You</i> 2022 book by Jonathan Escoffery

If I Survive You is the debut book by Jonathan Escoffery, published on September 6, 2022. It is a collection of eight interlinked short stories that follow the struggles of an immigrant family from Jamaica who build a new home in Miami. The story's main character is Trelawny, an American-born son of immigrants who grapples with identity, familial and cultural issues through various phases of adolescence and adulthood.

Megan Nolan is an Irish journalist and author from County Waterford. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the Betty Trask Award for debut novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2023 Booker Prize</span> British literary award given in 2023

The Booker Prize is an annual literary award given for the best English-language novel of the year published in either the United Kingdom or Ireland. The 2023 winner was Paul Lynch's Prophet Song.

Chetna Maroo is a British Indian author. Her debut novel, Western Lane, was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

<i>The Bee Sting</i> 2023 book by Paul Murray

The Bee Sting is a 2023 novel by Paul Murray, published by Macmillan. The book depicts the dysfunctional, hapless lives of the Barnes family of Ireland, with portions of the book dedicated to the lives of each of the four family members. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and won both the An Post Irish Book of the Year award and the Fiction category and overall winner, the Gold Nero, in the inaugural Nero book awards.

The Nero Book Awards are British literary awards, inaugurated in 2023. They are run by coffeehouse chain Caffè Nero in partnership with the Booksellers' Association, Brunel University London and Right To Dream, "a football community dedicated to expanding people's understanding of excellence through football".

References

  1. ↑ Fox, Genevieve (2 June 2011). "Paul Murray: Week One: Interview" . The Telegraph .
  2. ↑ "Sunday Salon: An Interview with Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies". keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com. 27 June 2010.[ self-published source ]
  3. ↑ Popkey, Miranda (21 October 2010). "Paul Murray and 'Skippy Dies'". The Paris Review .
  4. ↑ "Whitbread Prize 2003". theguardian.com.
  5. ↑ "Jonathan Escoffery, Chetna Maroo and Paul Murray among 2023 Booker Prize Shortlist". Aussie Osbourne . Retrieved 22 September 2023.
  6. ↑ "Longlist announced for Man Booker Prize 2010: Man Booker Prize news". Archived from the original on 21 May 2011. Retrieved 6 August 2010.
  7. ↑ Jordan, Justine (31 May 2023). "The Bee Sting by Paul Murray review – a tragicomic triumph". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 6 July 2023.
  8. ↑ Jordan, Justine (1 August 2023). "Irish writers, debuts – and groundbreaking sci-fi: the Booker longlist in depth". The Guardian .
  9. ↑ Anderson, Porter (21 September 2023). "In England: The Booker Prize for Fiction Names Its 2023 Shortlist". Publishing Perspectives. Retrieved 22 September 2023.
  10. ↑ "Jonathan Escoffery, Chetna Maroo and Paul Murray among 2023 Booker Prize Shortlist". Aussie Osbourne. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
  11. ↑ Falvey, Deirdre (22 November 2023). "Paul Murray wins Novel of the Year for The Bee Sting at the An Post Irish Book Awards". irishtimes.com. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
  12. ↑ Creamer, Ella (14 March 2024). "Paul Murray's The Bee Sting wins inaugural Nero book of the year prize". The Guardian .
  13. ↑ Clarke, Donald (26 June 2019). "Metal Heart: Hugh O'Conor's charming comedy set in middle-class suburban Dublin" . The Irish Times .
  14. ↑ Shortall, Eithne (16 June 2019). "Metal Heart star Jordanne Jones on the role she was born to play" . The Times .
  15. ↑ Fox, Killian (27 May 2023). "Paul Murray: 'I just dumped all my sadness into the book'". The Guardian .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.