Wake Forest University Press

Conor O'Callaghan

Conor O’Callaghan was born in 1968 in Newry, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Dundalk, just south of the Irish border. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1993, The Rooney Prize Special Award in 1996, The Times Educational Fellowship in 1997, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 1994.

His books include The History of Rain (1993) and Seatown (1999), both published in Ireland by The Gallery Press. In the United States, he is published by Wake Forest University Press, which published Seatown and Earlier Poems in 2000. A pamphlet, A History of ‘Hello’, was published in limited edition monograph by Phoenix Press (London) in 2003. In November 2005, Wake Forest published Fiction, his third collection of poems, which was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Prize.

He has reviewed poetry extensively, especially for the Times Literary Supplement and the Irish Times. Apart from poetry, O’Callaghan has written widely on sport, especially soccer and cricket. His acclaimed radio documentary on cricket in Ireland, The Season, was originally broadcast on Irish national radio in 1996 and has been repeated many times since. A further essay, ‘Jolly Good Shot Old Boy’, appeared in Playing the Field: Eleven Irish Writers on Sport (New Island, 2000) and was praised in the Irish Times as ‘perfectly-pitched reportage… compelling, moving and very funny’. His prose memoir of the public furor surrounding Ireland’s involvement in the 2002 World Cup, Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War, was published by Bloomsbury and is on the bestseller lists in Ireland and the UK.

He has regularly participated in the Arts Council Writers-in-Schools programs, has taught creative writing courses, and in 1999-2000 was Writer-in-Residence at University College, Dublin. He was director of Poetry Now in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, one of the biggest annual poetry festivals in the British Isles. In the spring and fall of 2004, he co-held the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University, Philadelphia, and for the academic years of 2005-2006 and 2006-2007, taught at Wake Forest University. He currently teaches at Sheffield Hallam University in England, and is poet-in-residence at Wake Forest University on alternate spring semesters.

He lives in Manchester, England.

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Available books by Conor O'Callaghan:

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Fiction

Seatown and Earlier Poems