Irish Writers Online / Author
Thomas Kilroy
Thomas Kilroy was born in 1934 in Callan, Co. Kilkenny.
He has published a novel, The Big Chapel (London, Faber & Faber, 1971), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize, 1971, but he is best known as a playwright.
His plays include The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche (The Dublin Theatre Festival, 1968. London Faber & Faber/New York, Grove Press, 1968); The O’Neill (Dublin, The Peacock Theatre, 1969. Oldcastle, Co Meath, The Gallery Press, 1995); Sex and Shakespheare (Dublin, The Abbey Theatre, 1976. Revised edition, The Gallery Press, 1998); Talbot’s Box (The Peacock, 1973. The Gallery Press/Delaware, Proscenium Press, 1979); The Seagull (adapt. Chekov, London, The Royal Court, 1981. London, Eyre Methuen, 1981); Double Cross (The Abbey Theatre, 1986. Faber & Faber, 1986); The Madam MacAdam Travelling Theatre (The Field Day Theatre Company, 1992. Methuen, 1992); The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (The Abbey, 1997/Melbourne Festival 1998. The Gallery Press, 1997); and The Shape of Metal (The Abbey Theatre, 2003. The Gallery Press, 2003).
He has also adapted Ibsen’s Ghosts (Peacock 1989); and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (The Abbey, 1996).
His other awards include the Heinemann Award for Literature; The AIB Literary Prize; the American-Irish Foundation Award for Literature; The Rockefeller Foundation Residency; the Kyoto University Foundation Fellowship; a Prix Nikki Special Commendation; and an Irish Pen Award
His radio play, The Coleen and the Cowboy, will be filmed by director by Paul Quinn.
He is a member of The Irish Academy of Letters, The Royal Society of Literature, and Aosdána.
He lives in Co Mayo.
