Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney (born 20 February 1991) is an Irish author and screenwriter.

Rooney was born in Castlebar, County Mayo, in 1991, where she also grew up and lives today, after studying in Dublin and a stint in New York City.

Her father, Kieran Rooney, worked for Telecom Éireann and her mother, Marie Farrell, ran an arts centre.

Rooney has an older brother and a younger sister.

She studied English at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where she was elected a scholar in 2011.

She started (but did not complete) a master's degree in politics there, completing a degree in American literature instead, and graduated with an MA in 2013.

While attending Trinity College Dublin, Rooney was a university debater and eventually became the top debater at the European Universities Debating Championships in 2013, later writing of the experience.

Before becoming a writer, she worked for a restaurant in an administrative role.

Rooney completed her first novel—which she has called "absolute trash"—at age 15.

Her first published works were two poems in The Stinging Fly, submitted to the magazine when she was in secondary school.

She began writing "constantly" in late 2014.

She completed her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, while studying for her master's degree in American literature.

She wrote 100,000 words of the book in three months.

In 2015, her essay "Even If You Beat Me", about her time as the "top competitive debater on the continent of Europe", was seen by an agent, Tracy Bohan, of the Wylie Agency, and Bohan contacted Rooney.

Rooney gave Bohan a manuscript, and Bohan circulated it to publishers, receiving seven bids.

"She had seen my story and wondered whether I had anything else she could read... But I didn’t send her anything for ages... I don’t know why. I didn't want her to see this shoddy draft."

Rooney signed with Tracy Bohan of the Wylie Agency, and Conversations with Friends was subject to a seven-party auction for its publishing rights, which were eventually sold in 12 countries.

The novel grew out of Rooney's exploration of the history between the two main characters of her short story "At the Clinic", which was first published in London-based literary magazine The White Review in 2016.

She has published three novels: Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021).

The novel was published in June 2017 by Faber and Faber.

In March 2017, her short story "Mr Salary" was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.

In November 2017, Rooney was announced as editor of the Irish literary magazine The Stinging Fly.

She was a contributing writer to the magazine.

It was nominated for the 2018 Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the 2018 Folio Prize, and won the 2017 Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award.

She oversaw the magazine's two issues in 2018, before handing the editorship over to Danny Denton.

She remains a contributing editor to the magazine.

In 2018, Rooney was announced as taking part in the Cúirt International Festival of Literature.

Rooney's second novel, Normal People, was published in September 2018, also by Faber and Faber.

In July 2018, Normal People was longlisted for that year's Man Booker Prize.

On 27 November 2018, the work won "Irish Novel of the Year" at the Irish Book Awards and was named Waterstones' Book of the Year for 2018.

In January 2019, it won the Costa Book Award (formerly the Whitbread) for the Novel category.

It was longlisted for the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize and the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction.

It has been translated into 46 languages and earned praise from Barack Obama and Taylor Swift, among others.

Normal People was made into a 12-part series as a co-production of BBC Three and the online platform Hulu, with filming taking place in Dublin and County Sligo.

The series was directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald.

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal played Marianne and Connell, respectively.

The series was a critical success and earned four Primetime Emmy Award nominations including for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series.

The first two were adapted into the television miniseries Normal People (2020) and Conversations with Friends (2022).

Rooney's work has garnered critical acclaim and commercial success, and she is regarded as one of the foremost millennial writers.

Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022.