Kevin Barry

Born in Limerick and currently living in Sligo, Kevin Barry started his writing career as a journalist with his local paper. Having moved onto freelance work, writing columns in The Irish Examiner, The Irish Times and Glasgow’s Sunday Herald, he decided to focus more earnestly on his fiction.

In 2007, Kevin’s collection of short stories, There are Little Kingdoms (The Stinging Fly Press, Dublin, 2007), won The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. In 2011 his novel, The City of Bohane (Jonathan Cape, London, 2011), was nominated in the Best First Novel category in the Costa (formerly the Whitbread) Book Awards.

In these two volumes Barry demonstrates a wide range of capabilities. Reading his short stories tells the reader that the author knows rural Ireland intimately and can describe it eerily accurately.

His novel, The City of Bohane, could be described as a cross between Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting, but more. Set in a West of Ireland city, forty years in the future, it tells the tale of a power struggle intermingled with loss, love, corruption, loyalty and family politics.

2012 will see Kevin Barry’s first appearance at P-CON as a guest and I for one am looking forward to meeting this talented writer and hearing about his plans for future publication. He is now on my automatic buy list.

Biography by Peter McClean