Anne Enright

She began writing in earnest when she was given an electric typewriter for her 21st birthday.

She won a Chevening Scholarship to the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course, where she studied under Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury and completed an MA degree.

Enright was a television producer and director for RTÉ in Dublin for six years and produced the RTÉ programme Nighthawks for four years.

She then worked in children's programming for two years and wrote on weekends.

An angel called Stephen who committed suicide in 1934 and has come back to earth to guide lost souls moves into Grace's home and she falls in love with him.

Anne Teresa Enright (born 11 October 1962) is an Irish writer.

1991 brought the publication of The Portable Virgin, a collection of her short stories.

Angela Carter (who, as Enright's former creative writing teacher, knew her well) called it "elegant, scrupulously poised, always intelligent and, not least, original."

She began writing full-time in 1993.

Her full-time career as a writer came about when she left television due to a breakdown, later remarking: "I recommend it [...] having a breakdown early. If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. It's the people who are always on the brink of crisis who don't hit bottom who are in trouble."

Of her time spent working behind the scenes as a producer, Enright said: "There was a great buzz and sometimes I felt like awarding myself purple hearts for the work I was doing."

It was a time of "drinking too much" and "hanging around" with people "who don't really have steady jobs".

Enright's first novel was published in 1995.

Titled The Wig My Father Wore, the book explores themes such as love, motherhood and the Catholic Church.

The narrator of the novel is Grace, who lives in Dublin and works for a tacky game show.

Her father wears a wig that cannot be spoken of in front of him.

Her second novel, What Are You Like?, was shortlisted in the novel category of the 2000 Whitbread Awards.

In 2000 Enright's second novel, What Are You Like?, was published.

About twin girls called Marie and Maria who are separated at birth and raised apart from each other in Dublin and London, it looks at tensions and ironies between family members.

It was shortlisted in the novel category of the Whitbread Awards.

Enright's third novel, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, published in 2002, is a fictionalised account of the life of Eliza Lynch, an Irish woman who was the consort of Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López and became Paraguay's most powerful woman in the 19th century.

Enright's 2004 book, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, is a collection of candid and humorous essays about childbirth and motherhood.

Enright won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for her fourth novel The Gathering.

Her fourth novel, The Gathering, won the Man Booker Prize in 2007.

The aide-de-camp of President McAleese acknowledged the result.

A positive review in The New York Times stated that there was "no consolation" in The Gathering.

Her 2012 novel The Forgotten Waltz won the Andre Carnegie Medal for Fiction.

Enright lives in Dublin, having previously lived in Bray, County Wicklow, until 2014.

She is married to Martin Murphy, who was director of the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire and now works as an adviser to the Arts Council of Ireland.

They have two children, a son and daughter.

She has described her working practice as involving "rocking the pram with one hand and typing with the other".

Critics have suggested that it was from the work of Flann O'Brien that Enright derived her early efforts.

The first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015–2018) and winner of the Man Booker Prize (2007), she has published seven novels, many short stories, and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children.

Her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian.

Her fiction explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.

Her novel The Green Road was shortlisted for the Woman's Prize, and won The Irish Novel of the Year (2015).

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, Ireland, and was educated at St Louis High School, Rathmines.

She won an international scholarship to Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, where she studied for an International Baccalaureate for two years.

She then completed a BA in English and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin.

Enright's seventh novel Actress was selected for the longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020.