Bernard MacLaverty

Bernard MacLaverty (born 14 September 1942) is an Irish fiction writer and novelist.

His novels include Cal and Grace Notes.

He has written five books of short stories.

MacLaverty was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and educated at Holy Family Primary School in the Duncairn district and then at St Malachy's College.

After school, he worked as a medical laboratory technician and studied at Queen's University Belfast.

He lived in Belfast until 1975, when he moved to Scotland with his wife, Madeline, and four children (Ciara, Claire, John, and Jude).

He initially lived in Edinburgh and then the island of Islay before settling in the West End of Glasgow.

He was Writer-in-Residence at the Universities of Aberdeen, Liverpool John Moores, Augsburg and Iowa State.

His first novel Lamb was published in 1980.

It is about faith, relationships and, ultimately, love.

Other awards were the Pharic McLaren Award for the best radio play from Radio Industries of Scotland for 'My Dear Palestrina' and the Jacobs Award for best play from Radio Telefis Eireann for television production 'My Dear Palestrina' in 1981, the London Evening Standard Award for best screenplay for 'Cal' in 1984 and the Bronze medal for screenplay of 'Lamb'; also voted best film by the youth jury and by the ecumenical jury, Lucarno Film Festival in 1987.

It was followed by Cal in 1983.

This is an examination of love in the midst of violence.

MacLaverty wrote a screenplay for Cal in 1984; Helen Mirren and John Lynch starred and Mark Knopfler composed the film soundtrack.

He also adapted Lamb for the screen; Liam Neeson and Hugh O'Conor starred and Van Morrison composed the soundtrack.

MacLaverty has written versions of his fiction for other media – radio plays, television plays, screenplays and libretti.

Grace Notes, which was published in 1987, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

It is about the conflict between a desire to compose and motherhood.

The Anatomy School is a comedic coming-of-age novel.

His work has received multiple awards including being nominated for the Booker Prize in 1987 for Grace Notes.

In 2003 he wrote and directed a short film Bye-Child (BAFTA-nominated for "Best Short Film") and more recently wrote libretti for Scottish Opera's Five:15 series The King’s Conjecture, with music by Gareth Williams, and The Letter with music by Vitaly Khodosh.

He was the Ireland Fund Artist-in-Residence in the Celtic Studies Department of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto in October 2007.

MacLaverty is the author of five novels and seven short story collections.

For Scottish Opera in 2012, and again with music by Gareth Williams, he wrote The Elephant Angel, an opera for schools, which toured Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Novels:

Short story collections:

There have been several extensive assessments of his work including:

Colm Tobin described '‘Midwinter Break'' as 'a work of extraordinary emotional precision and sympathy, about coming to terms – to an honest reckoning – with love and the loss of love, with memory and pain...this is a novel of great ambition by an artist at the height of his powers’.

He has also written six collections of short stories, most of which are in his Collected Stories (Cape, 2013).

His novel Midwinter Break was the winner of the Bord Gáis Novel of the Year in 2017 and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.