Famous Playwrights from Ireland
- Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) ( BEE-ən; Irish: Breandán Ó Beacháin; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time.An Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, Behan was born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family becoming a member of the IRA's youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. However, there was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. Behan eventually joined the IRA at sixteen, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and he was also imprisoned in Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara, and also resided in Paris for a time. In 1954, Behan's first play The Quare Fellow, was produced in Dublin. It was well received; however, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gained Behan a wider reputation. This was helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television. In 1958, Behan's play in the Irish language An Giall had its debut at Dublin's Damer Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan's English-language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally. Behan's autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy, was published the same year and became a worldwide best-seller and by 1955, Behan had married Beatrice ffrench Salkeld, with whom he later had a daughter Blanaid Behan in 1963. By the early 1960s, Behan reached the peak of his fame. He spent increasing amounts of time in New York, famously declaring, "To America, my new found land: The man that hates you hates the human race." By this point, Behan began spending time with people including Harpo Marx and Arthur Miller and was followed by a young Bob Dylan. He even turned down his invitation to the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. However, this newfound fame did nothing to aid his health or his work, with his medical condition continuing to deteriorate: Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel received little praise. He briefly attempted to combat this by a sober stretch while staying at Chelsea Hotel in New York, but once again turned back to drink. Behan died on the 20th of March, 1964 after collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar in Dublin. He was given a full IRA guard of honour, which escorted his coffin. It was described by several newspapers as the biggest Irish funeral of all time after Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.
- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Colm Byrne (born 1966) is an Irish playwright. He was born in Limerick and lives in Galway. His plays have been noted as political, lively and poetic. He is a recipient of a Bay Area Critics Circle award and is a writer in residence with the LA Writer's Center.- Birthplace: Limerick, Republic of Ireland
- Colm Tóibín (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkɔl̪ˠəmˠ t̪ˠoːˈbʲiːnʲ]; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic and poet.Tóibín is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2017.Called "a champion of minorities" by Arts Council director Mary Cloake as he collected the 2011 Irish PEN Award, that same year John Naughton of The Observer included Tóibín among his list of Britain's three hundred "public figures leading our cultural discourse" — despite his being Irish.
- Birthplace: Enniscorthy, Republic of Ireland
- Conor McPherson (born 6 August 1971) is an Irish playwright, screenwriter and director of stage and film. In recognition of his contribution to world theatre, McPherson was awarded a doctorate of Literature, Honoris Causa, in June 2013 by the University College Dublin.
- Birthplace: Republic of Ireland, Dublin
Declan Lynch
Age: 64Declan Lynch (born 1961) is an Irish journalist, writer and playwright. Lynch was born in Athlone, Ireland, and now works for the Sunday Independent. Lynch graduated from Marist College secondary school in 1978. He dropped out of law school after one year and began writing for the music magazine Hot Press. He did this for a number of years before leaving to work for the Independent.- Birthplace: Athlone, Republic of Ireland
Dion Boucicault
Dec. at 69 (1820-1890)Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault (né Boursiquot; 26 December 1820 – 18 September 1890) was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. The New York Times hailed him in his obituary as "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century."- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (; 24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957), was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work, mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than ninety books of his work were published in his lifetime, and both original work and compilations have continued to appear. Dunsany's œuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as plays, novels and essays. He achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world; he is today best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter. He was the inventor of an asymmetric version of chess called Dunsany's Chess. Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Ireland's longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and travelled and hunted extensively. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis.
- Birthplace: London, England
- Emma Donoghue (born 24 October 1969) is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award. and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. Room was adapted into a film of the same name, for which Donoghue wrote the screenplay which was subsequently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- Enda Walsh (born 1967) is an Irish playwright.
- Birthplace: Republic of Ireland, Dublin
- Professor Frank McGuinness (born 1953) is an Irish writer. As well as his own plays, which include The Factory Girls, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Dolly West's Kitchen, he is recognised for a "strong record of adapting literary classics, having translated the plays of Racine, Sophocles, Ibsen, Garcia Lorca, and Strindberg to critical acclaim". He has also published four collections of poetry, and two novels. McGuinness has been Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin (UCD) since 2007.
- Birthplace: Buncrana, Republic of Ireland
Frank McMahon
Dec. at 65 (1919-1984)Frank McMahon (September 20, 1919 – December 22, 1984) was an American-Irish playwright and broadcasting executive. His adaptation of Brendan Behan's autobiographical Borstal Boy played on Broadway after a long run in Dublin's Abbey Theatre.- Birthplace: New York
Gary Duggan
Age: 45Gary Duggan (born 14 March 1979) is an Irish playwright. Born in Dublin in 1979, Duggan was raised in the North Dublin suburb of Donaghmede. He studied Media Production at Dublin Institute of Technology. Duggan began writing scripts at the age of 15 while attending Grange Community College in Donaghmede. His first staged work was a collection of monologues called Manhattan Whispers, staged as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2001. His first full-length play, Monged was produced by Fishamble Theatre Company in 2005 and won the Stewart Parker Trust Award for best debut play in 2006. Duggan's second play, Dedalus Lounge, premiered as part of the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival and was produced by Pageant Wagon Theatre Company. Duggan's third play, Trans-Euro Express, also produced by Pageant Wagon Theatre Company, premiered at the Mill Theatre, Dundrum in November 2008.- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. He was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems with a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable.
- Birthplace: Republic of Ireland, Dublin
- George Augustus Moore (24 February 1852 – 21 January 1933) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day. As a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola. His writings influenced James Joyce, according to the literary critic and biographer Richard Ellmann, and, although Moore's work is sometimes seen as outside the mainstream of both Irish and British literature, he is as often regarded as the first great modern Irish novelist.
- Birthplace: County Mayo, Republic of Ireland
- Hamilton Deane (1880–1958) was an Irish actor, playwright and director. He played a key role in popularising Bram Stoker's Dracula as a stage play and, later, a film.
- Birthplace: Republic of Ireland, New Ross
- Hugh Leonard (9 November 1926 – 12 February 2009) was an Irish dramatist, television writer and essayist. In a career that spanned 50 years, Leonard wrote nearly 30 full-length plays, 10 one-act plays, three volumes of essays, two autobiographies, three novels and numerous screenplays and teleplays, as well as writing a regular newspaper column.
- Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
Isaac Bickerstaffe
Dec. at 78 (1733-1812)Isaac Bickerstaffe or Bickerstaff (26 September 1733 – 1812?) was an Irish playwright and Librettist.- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- James Henry Cousins (22 July 1873 – 20 February 1956) was an Irish writer, playwright, actor, critic, editor, teacher and poet. He used several pseudonyms including Mac Oisín and the Hindu name Jayaram.
- Birthplace: Belfast, United Kingdom
James Plunkett
Dec. at 83 (1920-2003)James Plunkett Kelly, or James Plunkett (21 May 1920 – 28 May 2003), was an Irish writer. He was educated at Synge Street CBS. Plunkett grew up among the Dublin working class and they, along with the petty bourgeoisie and lower intelligentsia, make up the bulk of the dramatis personae of his oeuvre. His best-known works are the novel Strumpet City, set in Dublin in the years leading up to the lockout of 1913 and during the course of the strike, and the short stories in the collection The Trusting and the Maimed. His other works include a radio play on James Larkin, who figures prominently in his work. During the 1960s, Plunkett worked as a producer at Telefís Éireann. He won two Jacob's Awards, in 1965 and 1969, for his TV productions. In 1971 he wrote and presented "Inis Fail - Isle of Destiny", his very personal appreciation of Ireland. It was the final episode of the BBC series "Bird's-Eye View", shot entirely from a helicopter, and the first co-production between the BBC and RTE. He was a member of Aosdana. A second year class, "2 Plunkett" at Synge Street CBS, is named in honour of James Plunkett.- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Jimmy Murphy
Age: 63Jimmy Murphy is an Irish playwright living in Dublin. He is a former writer in residence at NUI Maynooth (2000–01), a member of the Abbey Theatre’s Honorary Advisory Council, a recipient of three Bursaries in literature from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and was elected a member of Aosdána in 2004. Murphy was born to Irish parents in Salford, Lancashire. When he was six, his family returned to Dublin, settling in the South inner-city district of Islandbridge. He first went to school in nearby Inchicore, attending the Oblate Fathers’ primary school there, then moved to Ballyfermot, a working-class heartland of suburban Dublin, in his teens. There, he attended secondary school at St. John’s De La Salle College. After failing the Irish Intermediate Certificate he left school to pursue an apprenticeship in painting and decorating, taking his Junior and Senior Irish Trade Certificates, and the City and Guilds of London exams at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Bolton Street. His stage plays include Brothers of the Brush (Dublin, The Peacock, Dublin Theatre Festival 1993), which was awarded best new Irish play; A Picture of Paradise (The Peacock, 1997); The Muesli Belt (Dublin, The Abbey Theatre, 2000); Aceldama (1998), The Kings of the Kilburn High Road (Waterford, Red Kettle Theatre Company, 2000), The Castlecomer Jukebox (Red Kettle, 2004) and What's Left of The Flag (Theatre Upstairs @ The Plough 2010), nominated for an Irish Times Best New Play Award. Murphy's last play, with an all female cast, The Hen Night Epiphany, premiered at The Focus Theatre, Dublin in September 2011 and was published by Oberon Books. It has recently been translated into Hebrew. Plays for radio include Mandarin Lime (BBC Radio 4, 1995), Peel’s Brimstone (BBC Radio 4, 1995), and "The Jangle of the Keys" (BBC Radio 4 1997). His awards include The Stewart Parker Award in 1994. The play The Kings of the Kilburn High Road was adapted by Tom Collins as the Irish language film Kings, and was selected as Ireland’s entry for best foreign-language film for the Academy Awards by the Irish Film and Television Academy. Three of his plays have been presented at the Acting Irish International Theatre Festival: Brothers of the Brush (2001 Festival, presented by the Tara Players of Winnipeg), The Kings of the Kilburn High Road (2005 Festival, first North American production, presented by the Irish Players of Rochester, and The Muesli Belt (2008 Festival, presented by the Toronto Irish Players). A one act play, Perfida, premiered at Theatre Upstairs in July 2012. In October 2012 "The Muesli Belt" received its US premiere at the Banshee Theater, Burbank, CA and in 2013 "The Hen Night Epiphany" received its US premiere at the Wade James Theater, Edmonds WA. In June 2013 a new production of Perfidia was staged by Red Kettle Theatre Company at their new theatre in Waterford. In May 2017 Murphy's second Verabtim piece for the Abbey, looking at police corruption, "A Whisper Anywhere Else", was produced at the Peacock theatre. His first Verbatim play for the Abbey, "Of This Brave Time", commissioned to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising, toured the UK in 2016 and later returned to the Peacock stage for a short run.John B. Keane
Dec. at 73 (1928-2002)John Brendan Keane (21 July 1928 – 30 May 2002) was an Irish playwright, novelist and essayist from Listowel, County Kerry.- Birthplace: Listowel
- John Banville is a writer who is known for writing "Albert Nobbs," "Riviera," and "The Sea."
- Birthplace: Wexford, County Wexford, Ireland
Liam Mac Uistin
Age: 87Liam Mac Uistin is a writer.- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- Maeve Binchy Snell (28 May 1939 – 30 July 2012) was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker best known for her sympathetic and often humorous portrayal of small-town life in Ireland, her descriptive characters, her interest in human nature, and her often clever surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and her death at age 73, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was mourned as the death of one of Ireland's best-loved and most recognisable writers.She appeared in the US market, featuring on The New York Times best-seller list and in Oprah's Book Club. Recognised for her "total absence of malice" and generosity to other writers, she finished 3rd in a 2000 poll for World Book Day, ahead of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Stephen King.
- Birthplace: Dalkey, Republic of Ireland
- Marina Carr born November 17,1964 is a prolific Irish playwright. She has written almost thirty plays, including By the Bog of Cats (1998) which was revived at the Abbey Theater in 2014.
- Birthplace: County Offaly, Republic of Ireland
Mark O'Rowe
Age: 55Mark O'Rowe is an Irish playwright and screenwriter.- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- One of the most acclaimed European playwrights of the late 20th and early 21st century, Martin McDonagh was the author of several Tony-nominated plays, including "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" (1996) and "The Cripple of Inishmaan" (1996) before segueing into a successful second career as a film writer and director. McDonagh's plays, which bristled with nationalist anger and dark humor as they addressed the emotional and political state of Ireland, earned him the praise of critics and theatergoers alike on both sides of the Atlantic. Both were undoubtedly dismayed by his abandonment of theater for film in 2006, but his efforts in that field - the Oscar-winning short "Six Shooter" (2006) and the Oscar-nominated "In Bruges" (2008) - established him as one of the most talented voices in international film. As an author, he returned to the stage with "A Behanding in Spokane" in 2010, his first piece to be set in America. The Broadway production starred Christopher Walken, who worked for McDonagh again in "Seven Psychopaths" (2012), a bloody black comedy co-starring Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson. A truly unique voice in both film and theater, McDonagh continued to build his impressive body of work with projects that deftly displayed his humor and ink-black view of humanity.
- Birthplace: Camberwell, London, England, UK
Mike Finn
Age: 43For people of a similar name see Mickey Finn (disambiguation) Michael 'Mike' Finn is an Irish international amateur sportsperson who has represented Ireland in Australian rules football and basketball as well as Kerry GAA and Victoria in Gaelic football.- Birthplace: Tralee, Republic of Ireland
Monckton Hoffe
Dec. at 70 (1880-1951)Monckton Hoffe was a writer who was best known for writing "The Lady Eve" and "Street Angel." Hoffe was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942 for the first project.- Birthplace: Connemara, Ireland
- Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for "gross indecency", imprisonment, and early death at age 46. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French while in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison, he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.
- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
The Best Oscar Wilde QuotesSee all
1The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.13 Votes- 2I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.11 Votes
- 3It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.9 Votes
- Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (30 October 1751 – 7 July 1816) was an Irish satirist, a playwright, poet, and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He is known for his plays such as The Rivals, The School for Scandal, The Duenna, and A Trip to Scarborough. He was also a Whig MP for 32 years in the British House of Commons for Stafford (1780–1806), Westminster (1806–1807), and Ilchester (1807–1812). He is buried at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. His plays remain a central part of the canon and are regularly performed worldwide.
- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, he wrote in both English and French. Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humor, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd."Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation." He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.
- Birthplace: Foxrock, Ireland
- Sean Lawlor (25 January 1954 – 10 October 2009) was an Irish character actor and playwright. He was best known for his portrayal of Malcolm Wallace in Braveheart. He also appeared in Titanic, In the Name of the Father and On Broadway. He appeared in many Irish television films and the RTÉ series Bracken, as well as parts in many Irish films. He produced plays for the stage including his own one-man play, The Watchman, in which he starred.
- Birthplace: Republic of Ireland, Dublin
- Seán Ó Tuama (1926, Cork, Ireland – September 2006) was an Irish poet, playwright and academic.
- Birthplace: Cork, Republic of Ireland
- Seán O'Casey (Irish: Seán Ó Cathasaigh [ˈʃaːn̪ˠ oː ˈkahəsˠiː]; born John Casey; 30 March 1880 – 18 September 1964) was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.
- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
- Sebastian Barry (born 5 July 1955) is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He was named Laureate for Irish Fiction, 2019 - 2021. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers.Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. He has been twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side was longlisted for the Booker. In January 2017, Barry was awarded the Costa Book of the Year prize for Days Without End, hence becoming the first novelist to win the prestigious prize twice.
- Birthplace: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Thomas MacAnna
Age: 99Tomás Mac Anna (born Thomas Francis McCann; 5 March 1924 – 17 May 2011) was an Irish theatre director and playwright. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 1970 for Borstal Boy.Born in Dundalk, he was educated at the College of Art in Dublin, worked as a customs officer 1945–47, and then at the Abbey Theatre as a producer of Irish language plays, subsequently becoming Artistic Adviser to the Board in 1966, then Artistic Director 1972–79 and 1984–85. His work as an innovative stage director was crucial in modernizing the Abbey style after its re-opening in 1966. He directed Borstal Boy, which after its transfer to New York, won the Tony Award for Best Play and earned him a nomination for Best Direction of a Play at the 24th Tony Awards in 1970.He co-wrote the Irish pantomimes for years. Amongst his original plays are Winter Wedding (1956), Dear Edward (1973), Scéal Scéalaí (1977), and Glittering Spears (1983), a drama-documentary on O'Casey's The Silver Tassie. He died in Bray, County Wicklow, aged 84- Birthplace: Dundalk, Republic of Ireland
Vincent Woods
Age: 65Vincent Woods (born 1960) is an Irish poet and playwright. He currently hosts The Arts Show on RTÉ Radio 1.- Birthplace: County Leitrim, Republic of Ireland
- William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Birthplace: Republic of Ireland, Sandymount
- William Trevor KBE (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016) was an Irish novelist, playwright and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he was widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language.He won the Whitbread Prize three times and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize, the last for his novel Love and Summer (2009), which was also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2011. His name was also mentioned in relation to the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2014, Trevor was bestowed Saoi by the Aosdána.Trevor resided in England from 1954 until his death at the age of 88.
- Birthplace: Mitchelstown, Republic of Ireland
