Colm Tóibín born 30 May 1955Acclaimed Irish novelist and journalist Colm Tóibín is the author of a number of non-fiction books and five novels. His writings are infused with keen political insights and shrewd analyses. While same-sex desire is not overtly addressed in his early work, his most recent novels are astutely observed, unsentimental explorations of gay men trying to fit into an unwelcoming, and often openly hostile, world.
Tóibín received his secondary education at St Peter's College, Wexford, where he was a boarder from 1970 to 1972. He then progressed to University College Dublin, graduating in 1975. Immediately after graduation, he left for Barcelona. His first novel, The South (1990), was partly inspired by his time in the Spanish city, as was, more directly, his non-fiction Homage to Barcelona (1990).
After returning to Ireland in 1978, he began studying for a Masters. He never handed in his thesis and left academia, at least partly, for a career in journalism. The early 1980s were an especially bright period in Irish journalism and the heyday of the monthly news magazine Magill. Tóibín became editor of that magazine in 1982, remaining in the position until 1985.
The Heather Blazing (1992), his second novel, was followed by the award-winning The Story of the Night (1996) and The Blackwater Lightship (1999). His fifth novel, The Master (2004), was a fictional account of portions in the life of author Henry James. In 2006 his first collection of short stories was published as Mothers and Sons. In January 2010, Tóibín was named the winner of the Costa Novel Award for his novel Brooklyn.
He is the author of other non-fiction books: Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1994), (reprinted from the 1987 original edition) and The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994). He has written a play that was staged in Dublin in August 2004, Beauty in a Broken Place.
He has continued to work as a journalist, both in Ireland and abroad. He has also achieved a reputation as a literary critic: he has edited a book on Paul Durcan, The Kilfenora Teaboy (1997); The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999); and has written The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950 (1999), with Carmen Callil; a collection of essays, Love in A Dark Time: Gay lives from Wilde to Almodóvar (2002); and a study on Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002).
Tóibín's work explores several main lines: The depiction of Irish society, living abroad, the process of creativity and the preservation of a personal identity, focusing especially on homosexual identities — Tóibín is openly gay — but also on identity in front of loss.