Billy O'Callaghan

Billy O'Callaghan
Born (1974-12-09) December 9, 1974
Cork, Ireland
Occupation Short fiction writer
Nationality Ireland
Period 1999–present
Literary movement Irish Short Story
Notable works The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind
Website
www.billyocallaghan.ie/en/bibliography/

Billy O'Callaghan (born December 9, 1974) is an Irish short fiction writer. His short-story collection The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind was awarded the Writing.ie Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for the short story in 2013.[1][2][3]

Early life

Billy O'Callaghan was born in Cork in 1974, and grew up in Douglas village, where he still lives. His first collection of short stories, In Exile, was published by Mercier Press in 2008.[4] This was followed a year later by a second collection, In Too Deep (also published by Mercier Press).[5][6] Then, in 2013, his third collection, The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, was published by New Island Books.[7][8] It earned him a 2013 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award.

Literary career

O'Callaghan's short stories have been published in: Absinthe: New European Writing, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, the Bellevue Literary Review, Bliza, Confrontation, The Fiddlehead, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Kenyon Review, the Kyoto Journal, the London Magazine, the Los Angeles Review, Narrative Magazine, the Southeast Review, Southword, Underground Voices, Versal, and Yuan Yang: a Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing, and many other literary journals and magazines around the world. His stories have also been translated into Polish and Turkish, and have been broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1's The Book On One,[9] Sunday Miscellany and the Francis McManus Award series.

O'Callaghan compiled a non-fiction book, Learning from the Greats: Lessons on Writing, from the Great Writers, which was published in 2014 by Cork City Libraries as part of their Occasional Series.[10][11] He also regularly reviews books for the Irish Examiner.

In March 2016, it was announced that O'Callaghan's first novel, The Dead House, would be released by Brandon Books in Spring 2017.[12]

Awards and honors

In November 2013, the title story of O'Callaghan's most recent collection, The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind won the inaugural Short Story of the Year Award at the 2013 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award. Listed among his other honours are The Molly Keane Creative Writing Award, the George A. Birmingham Award, and Bursaries for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Cork County Council. He has also been shortlisted for many other awards both in Ireland and abroad, including the Seán Ó Faoláin Award, the Glimmer Train Prize, the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize and – on four occasions – the RTÉ/P.J. O'Connor Radio Drama Award. In addition, one of his stories was selected, in 2014, as Ireland's representative in the ongoing UNESCO Cities of Literature project.[13]

“I know of no writer on either side of the Atlantic who is better at exploring the human spirit under assault than Billy O’Callaghan. The stories in The Things We Lose, the Things We Leave Behind are at once harrowing and uplifting, achingly sad and surpassingly beautiful. O’Callaghan is a treasure of the English language.”
— Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, [14]
“The elegant force of Billy O’Callaghan’s prose is immediate and impossible to recover from. He is one of Ireland’s finest short story writers.”
— Simon Van Booy, Frank O’Connor Award-winning author of Love Begins in Winter, [15]

Bibliography

Short story collections

Non-fiction

References

External links

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