What The Hell/Heaven Are We Doing - 15. Thomas Kilroy 2

The Arts Council Podcast

Welcome back to What the Hell/Heaven Are We Doing?, the series where the Laureate for Irish Fiction, Sebastian Barry, asks big questions of fellow writers about the nature of their shared craft. What is the purpose of writing? Find out what author Tom Kilroy thinks in this episode. Thomas Kilroy was born in Callan, Co Kilkenny in 1934. He served as play editor at the Abbey in 1977 and was appointed Director of Field Day Theatre Company in 1988. Kilroy was Professor of English at UCG and has published a number of academic essays and studies. In 1989, he resigned his professorship, to concentrate fully on writing. His many awards include the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Heinemann Award for Literature, the AIB Literary Prize and an Irish PEN Award. Thomas Kilroy is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, the Irish Academy of Letters and Aosdána. He was honoured with a special Lifetime Achievement Award at the ESB/Irish Times Theatre Awards in 2004. He lives in County Mayo. The Laureate for Irish Fiction is an initiative of the Arts Council in partnership with University College Dublin and New York University.