Colm Tóibín

Biography of Colm Toibin

Biographical details: - Jacob Urup Nielsen

Colm Toibin was born in Ireland in 1955 and grew up in a Republican family in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. He went to Dublin at the age of 17 to study English and History at Universty College Dublin. After graduating from UCD he moved to Spain in 1975 shortly before the death of Franco. In Barcelona he, very appropriately, taught English at "an institution called the Dublin School of English". He lived in Catalonia for three years before returning to Ireland 1978. Recollections of his Spanish years can be read in the book Homage to Barcelona and may be traced in his first novel The South.

After returning to Ireland he found work as a journalist. Over the years he has worked for Sunday Independent and been editor of the current affairs magazine Magill. In 1990 Tóibín published his first work of fiction, the novel The South. The novel draws on his personal connection to Catalonia and Enniscorthy and explores the protagonists' sense of belonging, even in places where they do not feel welcome. All Tóibín's fiction is writing is fuelled by the sense of being in minority, of going against the grain - especially the prevailing nationalist tradition that exists in Ireland. In an essay he describes his position in the following way:

"I was in my late teens and I already knew that what they had told me about God and sexuality wasn't true, but being an atheist or being gay in Ireland at that time seemed easier to deal with as transgressions compared to the idea that you could cease believeing in the Great Events of Irish nationalist history. [...] Imagine if Irish history were pure fiction, how free and happy we could be!" ('New Ways of Killing Your Father p31)

Using an academic jargon we may say that Tóibín's fiction challenges the metaphysical assumptions. Tóibín has won prizes for his first three novels and his fourth novel The Blackwater Lightship has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1995 the American Acdemy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M Forster Award.

In addition to being a highly praised novelist, Tóibín has written works of non-fiction and edited several anthologies and collections of essays. He now lives in Dublin. He is a member of Aosdána.