Anne Enright

Anne Enright
Anne Enright at Literaturhaus Köln, 18 November 2008
Born	Anne Teresa Enright (1962-10-11) 11 October 1962 Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Irish
Alma mater	Trinity College Dublin University of East Anglia
Period	1991–present
Genre	Novel, short story
Subject	Family Love Female body shape Maternity hospitals
Notable works	Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood The Gathering
Notable awards	Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 1991 Encore Award 2001 Booker Prize 2007 Irish Novel of the Year 2008
Spouse	Martin Murphy
Children	2

Anne Teresa Enright FRSL (born 11 October 1962) is an Irish writer of women's fiction. She has published half a dozen novels, many short stories and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about her time spent in Dublin's maternity hospitals. Her writing explores themes such as family, love, the female body shape, Ireland's difficult past and its modern zeitgeist. She is married to Martin Murphy, who is director of the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire. He has given her two children, a son and daughter. Described in the past as a Purist (i.e. taking a traditional approach), Enright has recently tried to refashion herself as a feminist (describing her own approach as "sad, smouldering feminism")

Enright had a low profile in Ireland and the United Kingdom (although her books were favourably reviewed) before she somewhat accidentally and unexpectedly won the 2007 Booker Prize "lottery". It later emerged that Enright's victory had denied Ian McEwan a second Booker Prize; she had simply been the compromise decision reached due to disagreements between the deciders over the merits of McEwan's On Chesil Beach (whether it actually qualified as a novel or was a different category of book, the novella). The Booker incident advanced her profile considerably; the Royal Society of Literature elected her a Fellow in 2010 and, in 2017, The New Yorker published a couple of her short stories. Enright did a Creative Writing Course at the University of East Anglia in England.

Early life

Anne Enright was born in Dublin and was educated at St Louis High School, Rathmines. She completed a BA in English and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, then won an international scholarship to Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, where she studied for an International Baccalaureate for two years.

She began writing in earnest when her family gave her an electric typewriter for her 21st birthday. She won a Chevening Scholarship to the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course, where she studied under Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury and completed an M.A.

Enright was a television producer and director for RTÉ in Dublin for six years and produced the RTÉ programme Nighthawks for four years. She then worked in children's programming for two years and wrote on weekends. Enright began writing full-time in 1993. Her full-time career as a writer came about when she left television due to a breakdown, later remarking: "I recommend it [...] having a breakdown early. If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. It's the people who are always on the brink of crisis who don't hit bottom who are in trouble."

Personal life

Enright lives in Bray, County Wicklow. She is married to Martin Murphy, who is director of the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire. They have two children, a son and daughter.

Work

Enright's early work has often been compared by critics to that of Flann O'Brien. The Portable Virgin, a collection of her short stories, was published in 1991. Angela Carter called it "elegant, scrupulously poised, always intelligent and, not least, original."

Enright's first novel, The Wig My Father Wore, was published in 1995. The book explores themes such as love, motherhood, Roman Catholicism, and sex. The narrator of the novel is Grace, who lives in Dublin and works for a tacky game show. Her father wears a wig that cannot be spoken of in front of him. An angel called Stephen who committed suicide in 1934 and has come back to earth to guide lost souls moves into Grace's home and she falls in love with him.

Enright's next novel, What Are You Like? (2000), is about twin girls called Marie and Maria who are separated at birth and raised apart from each other in Dublin and London. It looks at tensions and ironies between family members. It was short-listed in the novel category of the Whitbread Awards. The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002) is a fictionalised account of the life of Eliza Lynch, an Irish woman who was the consort of Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López and became Paraguay's most powerful woman in the 19th century. Her book Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004) is a collection of candid and humorous essays about childbirth and motherhood. Enright's fourth novel, The Gathering, was published in 2007.

Enright's writings have appeared in several magazines, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, the London Review of Books, The Dublin Review and The Irish Times. She was once a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, and now reviews for The Guardian and RTÉ. The 4 October 2007 issue of the London Review of Books published her essay, "Disliking the McCanns", about Kate and Gerry McCann, the British parents of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in suspicious circumstances while on holiday in Portugal in May 2007. The essay was criticised by some journalists.

In 2011, the Irish Academic Press published a collection of essays on Enright's work, edited by Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill. Her work is discussed and illustrated in the video "Reading Ireland."

In 2015, Enright was appointed as the inaugural Laureate of Irish Fiction by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. During her time as Laureate for Irish Fiction, Enright promoted people's engagement with Irish literature through public lectures and creative writing classes. She spent one semester at University College Dublin and one semester at New York University. Beginning September 2018, she joined the University College Dublin School of English as Professor of Fiction.

Bibliography

Novels

• What are you like? (2000)
• The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002)
• The Wig my Father Wore (2005)
• The Gathering (2007)
• The Forgotten Waltz (2011)
• The Green Road (2015)

Short fiction

Collections

• The Portable Virgin (1991)
• Taking Pictures (2008)
• Yesterday's Weather (2009)

Nonfiction

• Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004)

Stories

Title	Year	First published	Notes
Solstice	2017	Enright, Anne (13 March 2017). "Solstice". The New Yorker. 93 (4): 68–70. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
The hotel	2017	Enright, Anne (6 November 2017). "The hotel". The New Yorker. 93 (35): 58–60. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

Honours

• 1991 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for The Portable Virgin
• 2001 Encore Award for What Are You Like?
• 2004 Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award
• 2007 Booker Prize for The Gathering
• 2008 Irish Novel of the Year for The Gathering
• 2010 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist for The Forgotten Waltz
• 2012 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for The Forgotten Waltz
• 2012 Honorary Degree (DLit) from Goldsmiths College, University of London
• 2016 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for The Green Road

External links

• Anne Enright's top 10 slim volumes, The Guardian, 21 March 2001
• Transcript of interview with Ramona Koval on The Book Show, ABC Radio National, 15 September 2008, recorded at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2008
• Audio and video interviews with Anne Enright at RTÉ.ie.
• 2002 interview with Anne Enright in The Sunday Business Post.
• Podcast of Anne Enright discussing her Man Booker Prize at the Shanghai International Literary Festival
• "The TLS on Anne Enright": a collection of pieces on Anne Enright from The Times Literary Supplement, 17 October 2007.
• An interview and a reading from The Gathering on La Clé des langues, May 2010
• 2011 radio interview at The Bat Segundo Show
• "Anne Enright, August 2008." Close to the Next Moment: Interviews from a Changing Ireland by Jody Allen Randolph. Manchester: Carcanet, 2010.