Joseph O'Connor

O'Connor's latest book, Shadowplay, published in 2019, has been shortlisted for the 2019 Costa book prize in the Novel category.

In 2014, he was announced as the inaugural Frank McCourt Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick, where he teaches on the MA in Creative Writing.

Joseph Victor O'Connor is an Irish novelist. His 2002 historical novel Star of the Sea was an international number one bestseller. Before success as an author, he was a journalist with the Sunday Tribune newspaper and Esquire magazine. He is a regular contributor to Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and a member of the Irish artists' association Aosdána.

In 2002, he wrote the novel Star of the Sea, which The Economist listed as one of the top books of 2003. His 2010 novel, Ghost Light is loosely based on the life of the actress Maire O'Neill, born Mary "Molly" Allgood, and her relationship with the Irish playwright John Millington Synge. It was published by Harvill Secker of London in 2010.

His novel Cowboys and Indians (1991) was on the shortlist for the Whitbread Prize.

On 10 February 1985 O'Connor's mother was killed in a car accident. He had the mother of the character Sweeney in The Salesman (1998) die in such a manner.

Educated at Blackrock College, O'Connor graduated from University College Dublin with an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Literature. He did post-graduate work at Oxford University and received a second M.A. from Leeds Metropolitan University's Northern School of Film and Television in screenwriting. In the late 1980s, he worked for the British Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign; his second novel, Desperadoes, drew on his experiences in revolutionary Nicaragua.