Derek Mahon
1941 -
Derek Mahon was born in Belfast in 1941, studied at Trinity College, Dublin and the Sorbonne, and has held academic and journalistic appointments in Dublin, London and New York. He worked for some years as a screenwriter, specialising in the adaptation of Irish novels for television. He has been theatre critic for The Listener, poetry editor of the New Statesman, features editor of Vogue and a regular contributor to The Irish Times for which he wrote a weekly book column (1986-89). A member of Aosdána and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the New York Institute for the Humanities, he has been the recipient of numerous awards including the C.K. Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize and Lannan and Guggenheim fellowships.