Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín (Enniscorthy, 1955) is a writer, journalist, and Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He lived in Barcelona from 1975 to 1978, an experience he wrote about in his book Homage to Barcelona (in Catalan, Homenatge a Barcelona, Columna, 2003) and also in the novel The South (in Spanish, El sur, Emecé, 2003). His return to Ireland in 1978 marked the beginning of his career as a journalist, which he combines with travel writing. He presently writes for The New York Review of Books and London Review of Books, among other publications. Tóibín, whose work, translated into more than thirty languages, encompasses the genres of the novel, essay, and theatre, is considered to be one of Ireland’s most important literary figures today. Notable among his titles are Brooklyn (published in Catalan and Spanish by Amsterdam Llibres, 2010, and Lumen, 2010), The Blackwater Lightship (in Spanish, El faro de Blackwater, Edhasa, 2002), New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families (in Spanish, Nuevas maneras de matar a tu madre, Lumen, 2013), The Testament of Mary (in Catalan, El testament de Maria, Amsterdam, 2014, also published in Spanish by Lumen, 2014), and Nora Webster (published by Lumen and Amsterdam, 2016). His most recent books are the collection of poems Vinegar Hill (Carncanet Press, 2022), and The Magician (in Catalan as El mag, Amsterdam, and also in Spanish, Lumen, 2022), winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize.