Deirdre Madden

'Deirdre' Madden (born 20 August 1960) is a novelist from Northern Ireland.^[1] Not only does she writes for adults but she has written books for kids and her writing style has won her some awards.^[2]

Madden was born in Toome, County Antrim and was educated at St Mary's Grammar School in Magherafelt. She proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin (BA) and then to the University of East Anglia (MA).^[3]

In 1994 she was Writer-in-Residence at University College Cork, and in 1997 was a Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. She has travelled widely in Europe and has spent extended periods in both France and Italy.^[3] She is a member of Aosdána.^[1]

On 2 April 2024, Deirdre Madden was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize from Yale University, one of the world's most significant literary prizes, for the totality of her work to date. Deirdre Madden has won various other awards, including the 1987 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature,^[4] the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award,^[5] and the 1980 Hennessy Literary Award, later (2014) being inducted into the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame.^[6] She was also shortlisted for the 1997 Orange Prize.^[7] She has been described as "a pivotal voice in Northern Irish writing, her understated yet complex fictions often touching on the religious and political turmoil of the North".^[8]

• Hidden Symptoms (1986)
• The Birds of the Innocent Wood (1988)
• Remembering Light and Stone (1993)
• Nothing Is Black (1994)
• One by One in the Darkness (1996)
• Authenticity (2002)
• Snake's Elbows (2005)
• Thanks for Telling Me, Emily (2007)^[9]
• Molly Fox's Birthday (2008)
• Time Present and Time Past (2013)

• Christina Patterson, "Deirdre Madden: 'The Troubles are almost always in my work at some level'" (interview), The Guardian, 14 June 2013.
• 2010 review of Molly Fox's Birthday in The New York Times Book Review
• Deirdre Madden at Library of Congress, with 7 library catalogue records