Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy was born on May 28, 1940 in Dalkey, Ireland.

Went to University College Dublin in 1957 and has had two main characters in her books (Benny in "Circle of Friends" and Clare in "Echoes") attend the same university and study the same subjects she did.

After graduating from University College Dublin, Binchy worked as a teacher before becoming a journalist, columnist and editor at the Irish Times. She later moved to England, where she assumed the post of the newspaper's London editor in the early 1970s.

In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob's Award for her RTÉ play, Deeply Regretted By. A second award went to the lead actor, Donall Farmer. A 1993 photograph of her by Richard Whitehead belongs to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (London)and a painting of her by Maeve McCarthy, commissioned in 2005, is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland. In 2001, Scarlet Feather won the W H Smith Book Award for Fiction, defeating works by Joanna Trollope and then reigning Booker winner Margaret Atwood, amongst other contenders. In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.

Her first novel, Light and Penny Candle, was published in 1982 and went on to become a bestseller.

She was a writer, known for Echoes (1988), Circle of Friends (1995) and How About You (2007). She was married to Gordon Snell.

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, vol. 134, pages 52-57. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

Binchy's last novel -Minding Frankie- was published in 2010, the same year she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.