Michael Collins (Irish author)

Collins at Toronto Ireland Park

Michael Collins at Toronto Ireland Park Famine Memorial

Michael Collins (born 1964) is an Irish novelist and international ultra-distance runner. His novel The Keepers of Truth was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize. He has also won the Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Lucien Barriere Literary Prize at the Deauville American Film Festival. The award honours the best American Fiction published in France.

Collins is a graduate of The University of Notre Dame and Oxford University and hold a doctorate degree in English.

A former member of the Irish National Team for the 100k distance (62.2 miles, Collins holds the Irish national masters record over the 100k distance. As captain of the Irish National Team in 2010 he won a bronze medal at the World 100k Championships held in Gibraltar, and led home all Irish athletes.

Biography

Collins grew up in Limerick, Ireland and attended St Munchin's Boarding School in Limerick, known for producing talented distance runners. In 1981 while attending high school in New York (Rye High School), he won The New York State Cross Country Title and competed in the prestigious Fifth Avenue Mile.

Collins is a distant relative of the Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins. In 1983 he was awarded an athletic scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his undergraduate degree and a Masters of Fine Arts. He went on to earn a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago 1997 with an emphasis in computer-aided technologies where he worked on some of the first generation online applications that eventually morphed into the Netscape browser. While doing his doctorate he wrote The New York Times notable book of the year, The Meat Eaters (English title), The Man Who Dreamt of Lobsters (American title). Given the critical reception of these stories of Irish life, Collins maintained a dual interest in creative writing and computer programming.

After graduate school, Collins worked as a programmer writer at Microsoft at its Redmond headquarters. While at Microsoft he penned his short-listed Booker Prize novel, The Keepers of Truth.

During this time, Collins also returned to running and found international form again as he began competing in extreme races. In November 1999, after completing The Keepers of Truth, and slogging out 100-mile training weeks, aside from programming and writing, he won The 100-mile Himalayan Stage Race and also The Mount Everest Challenge Marathon. Said Collins, "It was a year of extremes. There were so many things I wanted to do. Most of all the drive came from a 1995 stabbing attack where I was left for dead on the streets of Chicago after a drug addict attacked me. Even now, almost 25 years later, if the going gets tough, I think about what if I had died on that summer evening in 1995? I think we need life-altering experiences to give us direction, to keep us wanting to all that we can while alive."

Collins is the author of nine works of fiction, including novels and short stories which have been translated into twenty languages. His work has garnered numerous awards, including Irish Novel of the Year, along with being shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and Impac Prize, and his work has been twice selected for inclusion in The New York Times Notable Books of the Year. His novel, The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton was selected as the Breakout Novel of the Year in France in 2007.

Works

• The Meat Eaters (short stories, also published as The Man who Dreamt of Lobsters), 1992
• The Life and Times of a Teaboy, 1993
• The Feminists Go Swimming, 1994
• Emerald Underground, 1998
• The Keepers of Truth, 2000
• The Resurrectionists, 2003
• Lost Souls, 2004
• Death of a Writer (British title: The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton), 2006
• Midnight in a Perfect Life (British title), 2010

Athletic achievement

Michael Collins enroute to winning The North Pole Marathon

Collins has raced the marathon and ultra-marathon distance at the South and North Pole, on Mount Everest and Sahara desert. In 2007, he finished 5th at the USA (USATF) 50 Mile Trail National Championships, and was the USA Masters National Champion Runner-up. In 2010 he won a bronze medal at the World 100k Championships held in Gibraltar.

Collins' endurance and extreme running races have also centered on humanitarian awareness, raising money for various causes and charities as he participates in these extreme events.

External links

• Michael Collins' website
• Runner's World Article