Æ (George William Russell). Image source earthrites.org

Æ (George William Russell) was born in Lurgan, County Armagh, in 1867, and moved to Dublin when he was eleven.

An active Irish nationalist, he edited the Irish Homestead (1904–23), where he published James Joyce’s The Sisters, and the Irish Statesman (1923–30), where he published Patrick Kavanagh’s early poems. He worked with Sir Horace Plunkett for Irish agricultural improvement, and he was also a talented amateur painter – the American collector John Quinn commissioned him to paint William Butler Yeats in 1902.

His main subject, however, was mysticism. Russell was one of the major writers in the Irish Literary Renaissance.

Among his poetry collections are Homeward: Songs by the Way (1894); The Earth Breath (1897); The Divine Vision (1904); Collected Poems (London, MacMillan, 1913/New York, John Lane, 1916); Salutation (1917) The House of the Titans (1934); and Selected Poems (1935).
His mystical writings include The Candle of Vision (1918); The Avatars (1933); The Interpreters (1922); and Song and its Fountains (1932).

His Collected works are published by Colin Symthe, Bucks. UK.

He died on July 17, 1935, in Bournemouth, England, and is buried in Dublin.

Chris Agee. Image source culturenorthernireland.org

Chris Agee was born in 1956 in San Francisco and grew up in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. He attended Harvard University and since 1979 has lived in Ireland.

His poetry collections are In the New Hampshire Woods (Dublin, The Dedalus Press, 1992), First Light (The Dedalus Press, 2003) and Next to Nothing (Cambridge, UK, Salt, 2009).

He is the editor of Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia (Bloodaxe, 1998, Poetry Society Recommendation), Unfinished Ireland: Essays on Hubert Butler (Irish Pages, 2003) and The New North Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland (Wake Forest University Press, 2008).

He reviews regularly for The Irish Times and is the Editor of Irish Pages, a journal of contemporary writing based at The Linen Hall Library, Belfast.

He holds dual Irish and American citizenship, and spends part of each year at his house near Dubrovnik, in Croatia.

Gabrielle Alioth. Image source gabriellealioth.com

Her novels are Der Narr ([The Fool], Zurich, Nagel & Kimche, 1990); Wie ein kostbarer Stein ([Like a Precious Stone)Nagel & Kimche, 1994); Die Arche der Frauen ([Women's Arch] Nagel & Kimche, 1996); and Die stumme Reiterin ([The Silent Rider]Nagel & Kimche, 1998).
Der Narr received the Hamburg literary award for best first novel and was also broadcast as a radio.

She was a member of the Irish delegation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1996 and member of the Swiss delegation in 1998, and was a judge in the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

She lives in Co Louth.

Fergus Allen. Image source dedaluspress.com

His collections are The Brown Parrots of Providencia (London, Faber & Faber, 1993); Who Goes There? (Faber & Faber, 1996); Mrs Power Looks Over the Bay (Faber & Faber, 1999); Gas Light & Coke (Dublin, Dedalus, 2006); and Before Troy (London, CB Editions, 2010).

He has lived in Britain since World War II, and now lives in Berkshire.

Chris Arthur. Image source blackstaffpress.com

His three books of essays are Irish Nocturnes (Aurora, Colorado, The Davies Group, 1999); Irish Willow (The Davies Group, 2002); and Irish Haiku (The Davies Group, 2005).

Excerpts from Irish Nocturnes, Irish Willow and Irish Haiku can be found in Patricia Craig’s The Ulster Anthology (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 2006), and a selection of his poetry was included in Lagan Press’s Poetry Introductions 1 (2004).

His awards include the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award, the Akergarasu Haya International Essay Prize, the Gandhi Society’s Aitchtey Memorial Essay Prize, and the Palgrave Macmillan/Times Higher Education Supplement Writing Prize in the Humanities.

A member of Irish PEN and the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, he lived in Scotland for over a decade, holding university fellowships in St Andrews and Edinburgh. In 1989 he moved to Wales to take up a lectureship at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

Michael Augustin. Image source dickinson.edu

He has published several collections of poetry, including Der Apfel der Versuchung war ungespritzt (Eichborn 1983); Koslowsky (Nautilus/Nemo Press, 1987), translated as A Certain Koslowski, by Margitt Lehbert, and which was published in the UK by Littlewood Arc in 1992, with illustrations by Harmut Eïng; Ach und Krach (Edition Temmen 1992); Der Polarstern ist durchgebrannt (Edition Temmen, 1993); Klein-Klein (Edition Temmen 1994); Mehr Nicht! (2000); Ad Infinitum, Poems and Epigrams (a German/Irish/English Selected, translated by Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock, Baile Átha Cliath, Coiscéim, 2001); Das perfekte Glueck (2001); Kleines Brimborium (2003); Der Chinese aus Stockelsdorf (2005); and Mickle Makes Muckle (trans. Sujata Bhatt, Dublin, The Dedalus Press, 2007).

Some of his books have been translated into Irish, English, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Dutch.
He has received many prizes, including the Friedrich Hebbel Prize (1977); the Kurt Magnus Prize (1982); a bursary of the Stichting Culturele Uitwisseling, Amsterdam (1986); and the Media Prize of the Stiftung Ostdeutscher Kulturat (1997).

He is Honorary Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowa. In 2003/3 he was Writer-in-Residence at Dickinson College (USA) where he also taught as a visiting professor.
He is a broadcaster with Radio Bremen where he edits the weekly radio documentary and presents a regular poetry program. He has translated prose, poems and plays by Peter Sheridan, Bill Morrison, Simon Gray, Raymond Carver, Pearse Hutchinson, Matthew Sweeney, Sujata Bhatt, Kenneth Koch, Adrian Mitchell, Adrian Henri and Roger McGough.

He studied literature and folklore in Dublin in the 1970s and is a regular visitor to Ireland.
He lives in Bremen.

*listed because of strong connection with Ireland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjh_FStea7g

Uploaded by DickinsonCollege on Oct 24, 2008
Augustin reading excerpts from his poem “Some Questions Regarding Poetry.”
Semana Poetica VII
ELEKTROSCHALLARCHIV (in German)
Michael Augustin at Dedalus Press
books
journals: SIRENA
GLOSSEN
Michael Augustin at Lyrikwelt
Michael Augustin at The National Library of Ireland

The Marriage at Antibes. Image source lilliputpress.ie

Her stories are collected as The Marriage at Antibes (Dublin, The Lilliput Press, 1999/New York, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000).

She lives in the south of France.

Keith Baker. Image source crimezone.nl

Inheritance won a WH Smith Fresh Talent Award in 1996 and is on the contemporary fiction syllabus at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is a former Head of News and Current Affairs for BBC Northern Ireland and lives in County Down.

Ivy Bannister. Image source ivybannister.com

Her short story collection is Magician (Dublin, Poolbeg Press, 1996). Many other stories have been published and broadcast, including What Big Teeth, filmed as Forgetting Aphrodite (2004).
Her memoir is Blunt Trauma: After the Fall of Flight 111 (Dublin, Ashfield Press, 2005).

Her plays have been produced on stage and radio in Ireland, the UK and Germany, among them, The Wilde Circus Show (Delaware, Proscenium Press, 1990). Poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in Ireland, the UK and the USA, and she has broadcast fifty pieces on RTÉ Radio’s Sunday Miscellany.

Awards include the O.Z. Whitehead Play (1986), Best Play Listowel (1987), Hennessy Short Story (1988), Mobil Ireland Play (1993), Francis MacManus Radio Story (1999), Best Small Collection of Poems Listowel (2005), and others.

She received an Arts Council Bursary in 1994.

She divides her time between Dublin and New York.

John Banville. Image source panmacmillan.co.uk

His novels are Long Lankin ([nine short stories and the novella, The Possessed], London, Secker & Warburg, 1970); Nightspawn (Secker & Warburg, New York/ WW Norton, 1971); Birchwood (Secker & Warburg/WW Norton, 1973); Dr Copernicus (London, Martin Secker & Warburg, 1976); Kepler (Martin Secker & Warburg, 1981); The Newton Letter (Martin Secker & Warburg, 1982/ Boston, David R. Godine, 1987); Mephisto (Martin Secker & Warburg, 1986/ David R.Godine, 1989); The Book of Evidence (Martin Secker & Warburg, 1989/ New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989); Ghosts (London, Secker & Warburg, 1993); Athena(Secker & Warburg, 1995); The Untouchable (London, Picador, 1998); Eclipse (Picador, 2000); The Sea (Picador, 2005); and The Infinities (Picador, 2009).

His two trilogies have been published as single volumes – The Revolutions Trilogy: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, Newton Letter – An Interlude; (Picador, 2000); and Frames: Book of Evidence, Ghosts, Athena (Picador 2001).

He has also published a play, The Broken Jug (Loughcrew, Co Meath, The Gallery Press, 1987), which was performed in the Abbey Theatre, Peacock stage, in 1987; and God’s Gift: A Version of Amphitryon by Heinrich Von Kleist (The Gallery Press, 2000). He has also published Prague Pictures: a Portrait of a City (London, Bloomsbury, 2003).

As Benjamin Black, he has published the thrillers Christine Falls (Picador, 2006); The Silver Swan (Picador, 2008); The Lemur (Picador, 2008); and Elegy for April (London, Mantle, 2010).

He his written the screenplays for The Last September, based on the novel of the same name by Elizabeth Bowen, directed by Deborah Warner (1999); and The Sea, based on his own novel, directed by Stephen Brown (2011).

He has received many awards, including The Allied Irish Banks Prize, and the Macauley Fellowship, for Birchwood (1973); The American-Irish Foundation Literary Award (1976); The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Copernicus (1976); The Guardian Prize for Fiction for Kepler (1981), and the Guinness Peat Aviation Award for The Book of Evidence (1989), for which he was also shortlisted for The Booker Prize.

He won the 2005 Man Booker Prize for The Sea, and in 2011 The Franz Kafka Prize.

The Newton Letter was filmed by Channel Four in Britain.

He lives in Dublin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2pOCJsUv-Q

Uploaded by nemcomtelevision on May 18, 2008
John Banville talks about reading books.

John Banville

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7szK6ArSh0

Uploaded by dbrodb1 on Jan 20, 2008
John Banville on mortality

John Banville at Pan MacMillan
John Banville at the Paris Review
John Banville at Contemporary Writers
Benjamin Black Books
John Banville at The National Library of Ireland