Mary O'Donnell

Mary O'Donnell (born 1954) is an Irish novelist and poet, a journalist, broadcaster and teacher. Biography O'Donnell was born in County Monaghan and was raised close to the border with Northern Ireland. Her Kilkenny-born father held a B. Ag from University College Cork, transferred to Monaghan to become Town of Monaghan Co-op's first Catholic General Manager in 1947. Her Monaghan born mother Maureen (née Macklin) trained in nursing in Belfast and was an accomplished singer. O'Donnell was educated at St. Louis Secondary School, Monaghan and attended college at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth(NUI), now Maynooth University. There she gained a degree in German and philosophy and an MA in German studies, followed by a First Class Hons Higher Diploma in education, which she used to become a language and drama teacher. In 2019 she was conferred with a PhD in Creative Writing from UCC. She is married to Martin Nugent, former Assistant Headmaster of Clongowes Wood College. They have one daughter, Anna O'Donnell Nugent. They live in Kildare. O'Donnell left teaching to work as a Drama Critic and journalist on the Sunday Tribune (1988–1991). During that period, her literary output increased. She became a regular contributor to The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) as well as to various literary journals. Her first novel, The Light-Makers, was an Irish best-seller and won the Sunday Tribune's Best New Irish Novel for 1992. She has written and published four novels, including The Elysium Testament and Where They Lie, eight collections of poetry (including Those April Fevers Arc UK 2015 and "Massacre of the Birds", Salmon 2020), three volumes of short stories. She has also taken part in several RTE radio programmes she scripted and presented, and won several awards for her writing in both fiction and poetry. In 2007 she was writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco. Her work has been translated into Hungarian, for which she was co-recipient of the 2012 Irodalmi Jelen Award for Translation. Most recently, her poetry is translated to Brazilian Portuguese and her short stories to Spanish (in Argentina). The work Giving Shape to the Moment: the Art of Mary O'Donnell, Poet, Novelist & Short-story Writer includes a selection of essays responding to her writing in each genre, an interview from Irish academic Dr Anne Fogarty, and offers a powerful overview of her contribution to Irish letters.