Born in Dublin in 1969, I am an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, playright, and historian, living in Canada with my family.
LATEST NEWS: FICTION
My new, sixteenth novel, The Paris Express, is inspired by an 1895 railway disaster and was a bestseller in Canada and Ireland on publication. Some upcoming events:
June 14, 10:30am, The Queer Female Voice (in conversation with Catherine Hernandez and Ann-Marie Macdonald, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford, Ontario
September 23, Heliconian Literary Series, Toronto
Sept 25, Blue Heron Books, Uxbridge, Ontario
Sept 26, Prince Edward County Cafe, Ontario
Sept 28, Ottawa Writers Festival
Sept 29, Côte San Luc Library, Quebec
October, various Canadian Festivals from Toronto to Victoria, tba
Nov 6, Writers Guild Theater, Los Angeles
Nov 8, Portland Literary Arts Festival, Portland, Oregon
LATEST NEWS: THEATRE
The Wind Coming Over the Sea is a folk musical using traditional songs of Ireland and Britain to tell the true story of a couple who emigrated from Antrim to Ontario during the Great Famine. It will have its world premere at the legendary Blyth Festival, which has premiered over 150 new Canadian plays. The Wind Coming Over the Sea runs June 26 to August 12, 2025 (opening matinee 28 June). https://blythfestival.com/the-wind-coming-over-the-sea/
LATEST NEWS: SCREEN
Recently I visited the UK shoot of H Is for Hawk, a feature film starring Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson, which I adapted with director Philippa Lowthorpe from Helen Macdonald's extraordinary memoir of grief and falconry.
CONTACT
For queries about fiction, non-fiction, or translations, please contact my agent Caroline Davidson of the Caroline Davidson Literary Agency in London (U.K.), 44 20 8995 5768, caroline@cdla.co.uk
For queries related to film or tv, please contact my screen agent Kassie Evashevski at Anonymous Content (New York), kassie@anonymouscontent.com
For queries about theatre, please contact my stage agent Sissi Liechtenstein at International Performing Rights Ltd, sl@iprltd.co.uk
For any US licensing or speaking engagement queries, please contact my American literary agent Kathleen Anderson of Anderson Literary Management (New York), 212 645 6045, kathleen@andersonliterary.com
To set up an event or an in-person or broadcast interview with me, please contact one of my publicists:
lauren.morocco@harpercollins.com (Canada)
cormac.kinsella@gmail.com (Ireland)
kate.green@macmillan.com (UK/former Commonwealth)
josefine.kals@simonandschuster.com (US)
You can reach me by email, or on Instagram, Bluesky, or Facebook, and I’ll respond as soon as I can. I’m happy to help with any obscure query to which you can’t find an answer on this website, or in the many articles by or interviews with me online. Sorry I can't visit book clubs in person or virtually, or comment on anyone's work, because I'm always writing.
SELECT WORKS
Inspired by the adolescence of the extraordinary Regency diarist Anne Lister (subject of the BBC/HBO series Gentleman Jack), my 2023 novel Learned by Heart is set in 1805 at the York boarding school where she met the Indian orphan heiress Eliza Raine.
Haven (2022), shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award (the most valuable prize for a single work of fiction in English), is an adventure story about the first three people to set foot on the island now known as Skellig Michael, around the year 600: a scholar-priest called Artt who has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind and find an isolated spot to found a monastery, and young Trian and old Cormac who agree to follow him into the unknown.
Set in Dublin during the Great Flu pandemic in 1918 (and written before COVID-19), The Pull of the Stars (2020) is about a nurse midwife, a doctor and a volunteer helper living through three days in a maternity quarantine ward. I adapted it for its world premiere on stage at Gate Theatre Dublin in 2024.
The Wonder (2016, a finalist for Canada's Giller Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year), is about a 'fasting girl' in nineteenth-century Ireland and the English nurse sent to watch her. I adapted it into the 2022 film with director Sebastián Lelio and Alice Birch, starring Florence Pugh, produced by Element Pictures (who made Room) and House Productions for Netflix.
I am best known for my novel Room (2010) which was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes and has sold almost three million copies. I adapted it into my first feature film, Room, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, which was nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Actress (won by our lead, Brie Larson). My theatrical adaptation of Room with songs by Cora Bissett and Kathryn Joseph had productions in England, Scotland and Ireland in 2017 and Canada in 2022.
My other fiction books are the historical novels Frog Music, The Sealed Letter, Life Mask, Slammerkin, and contemporary ones Akin, Landing, Hood and Stir-fry; two family stories for younger readers illustrated by Caroline Hadilaksono, The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More Or Less; and short-story collections Astray, Three and a Half Deaths (UK ebook), Touchy Subjects, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and Kissing the Witch.
I have also published literary history including Inseparable, We Are Michael Field, and Passions Between Women, as well as two anthologies that span the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries
