Biography

Both Colm Toibin's father and his uncle Padraig were involved in the Fianna Fail party in Enniscorthy. His father Micheal was born in 1913 and died in 1967. He worked for almost thirty years as a secondary teacher in the Christian Brothers in Enniscorthy. He also founded the Castle Museum in the town in the 13th century castle. (See 'Fianna Fail in Enniscorthy'; 'The County Museum' and 'The Boss' in 'Enniscorthy 2000'.) His father's writings about the town's history and heritage were edited by Colm Toibin and published in 1998. ( Enniscothy: History and Heritage, New Island Books.)

Colm Toibin was the second youngest of five children. (His older sister Bairbre Toibin is the author of the novel 'The Rising', New Island Books, 2001.) He went to the Christian Brothers School in Enniscorthy and then, for the last two years, to St Peter's College Wexford. In 1972 he went to University College Dublin where he studied History and English. He took a B.A. in 1975.

The day after he finished his finals in September 1975 he left for Barcelona where he stayed for three years. He taught at the Dublin School of English, and followed closely the political developments in Barcelona in these years. (Franco died in November 1975.) He marched in all the main demonstrations for Catalan autonomy and for Spanish democracy. He made a brave effort to learn Catalan. His experiences and the Catalan landscape and culture have been dealt with to some extent in his first novel 'The South' and 'Homage to Barcelona'.

He returned to Dublin in 1978 and began work on an M.A. in Modern English and American Literature. His thesis, never handed in, was on the American poet Anthony Hecht. He wrote for In Dublin and Hibernia, and later The Sunday Tribune. In 1981 he became Features Editor of In Dublin and at the end of 1982 joined Magill, then Ireland's main current affairs magazine, as Editor, and stayed in Magill until 1985. During these years he worked with people who were then, and still remain, the most influential in Irish journalism: Vincent Browne, Gene Kerrigan, Mary Raftery and Fintan O'Toole, among others.

In 1985 he left Magill and began to travel, moving first through South America and ending in Argentina where he attended the trial of Galtieri and the other generals in Buenos Aires. Later he travelled in the Sudan and Egypt. His best journalism from the 1980s, which includes sections on South America and Africa, is collected in 'The Trial of the Generals'.

Colm Toibin's first novel 'The South' was finished in 1986 but not published until 1990, being turned down in the meantime by most English publishers. (It was published by Serpent's Tail.) His first book, 'Walking Along the Border' with photographs by Tony O'Shea was published in 1987. In September 1987 he began work on his second novel 'The Heather Blazing'. In 1988 he spent a year in Barcelona where he wrote 'Homage to Barcelona' and renewed his acquintance with the city and with certain villages in the Pyrenees where 'The South' is set and where he has spent a great deal of time since then. 'The Heather Blazing was finished in 1991 and published in 1992 by Peter Straus at Picador who has remained Colm Toibin's editor. In Ireland, during these years he wrote regularly for 'The Sunday Independent', first as drama critic and television critic and later as political commentator.

In the 1990s Colm Toibin published two more novels, 'The Story of the Night' and 'The Blackwater Lightship', another travel book 'The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe' and edited several anthologies, including 'The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction'. In 1995 he edited a book of essays on the irish poet Paul Durcan ( 'The Kilfenora Teaboy', New Island Books). In 1999 he published 'The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels Since 1950' in collaboration with Carmen Callil. In 1994 he began to write for The London Review of Books and has since then been a regular contributor. His 'Love In a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar' ( Picador, March 2002) is made up mainly of pieces from the London Review of Books. In 2000 he became a Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at New York Public Library, working mainly on the Lady Gregory papers there. This resulted in 'Lady Gregory's Toothbrush', a section of which appeared in The New York Review of Books in August 2001, and which will appear in book form from Lilliput in March 2002, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Lady Gregory's birth. Colm Toibin has given workshops and masterclasses at Listowel Writers Week, The Arvon Foundation and The American University at Washington DC. He has also taught at the MFA program at the New School in Manhattan. His books have been translated into eighteen languages.