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Life
1968- ; left Dublin as a teenager; ed. Hunter College, NY (BA); m. Iranian scientist in California and completed film MA in San Fransisco State U.; issued Breakfast in Babylon (1995); issued More Bread or I’ll Appear (2000), Audre Lorde Prize, and Miriam Wienberg Richter Award, 2000; received Guggenheim Fellowship, 2000 (€50,000); awarded 2-year bursary by Irish Arts Council; teaches creative writing at TCD; winning Book of the Year Award, Listowel Writers’ Week, 2006; Teeth Shall be Provided (Canongate 1998); |
Baby Zero (April 2007), a tale of an Irish-raised Orapian woman’s fears during imprisonment in a fundamentalist [Taliban] regime, and the story she tells her unborn child about three “baby zeros”, partly inspired by the experiences of her husband’s family’s scattering; settled in Co. Meath, 2005, insensed by the Bush regime’s foreign policy in the Middle East; one-man show at Origins Gallery, Dublin; produced Nuts, Irvine Welsh’s directorial debut. |
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Works
Novels, Breakfast in Babylon (Wolfhound 1995), 320pp.; More Bread or I’ll Appear (Allison & Busby 2000); Baby Zero (Brandon Press 2007), 320pp.
Stories, Teeth Shall be Provided (Canongate 1998), q.pp.; contrib. to Shenanigans (Sceptre) and Fortune Hotel (Penguin).
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Criticism
Lucile Redmond, review of Breakfast in Babylon, in Books Ireland (Dec. 1995), p.327 [novel of drifters, winos, petty crooks in Paris, Berlin, London, central char. Isolate and Christopher, the Hoodoo man; streetwise; see also cover pic. in Books Ireland, Sept. 1995]; [Shirley Kelly,] ‘He Said Venice was Like Las Vegas’ interview-article in Books Ireland (Feb. 2007), p.6.
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Notes
Brandon Press (Cat. 2006), on Baby Zero: an Irish-raised Orapian, Marguerite, imprisoned by fundamentalist government and pregnant, tells her unborn child stories of three baby zeros, Leila, Marguerite and the child herself - all born to a family at times of upheaval and scattered about the globe - to an uncle in Los Angeles and an Irish refugee programme.
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