William Wall

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This article concerns the contemporary Irish author. For the 18th century divine, see William Wall (theologian).

William Wall is an Irish novelist, poet and short story writer.

1 Life & work
2 Publications
3 External links

[edit] Life & work

William Wall was born in Cork City in 1955, but grew up in the coastal village of Whitegate, an area that has strongly influenced the landscapes of his fiction. He received his secondary education at the Christian Brothers School in Midleton. He progressed to University College Cork where he graduated in Philosophy and English in 1977. Subsequently he taught English in a secondary school in Cork He retired from teaching to devote more time to his writing. He married in 1979 and has two children.
He published widely as a poet and subsequently as a writer of short fiction. Then in 1997 he won the prestigious Patrick Kavanagh Award for poetry, followed rapidly by prizes at Writers’ Week for poetry and short stories. He published his first collection of poetry in that year. His first novel, Alice Falling, a dark study of power and abuse in modern day Ireland, appeared in 2000. Two further novels followed, then a further collection of poetry.
In 2005 This Is The Country appeared. A broad attack on politics in ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland, as well as a rite of passage novel, it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. It can be read as a satirical allegory on corruption, the link between capitalism and liberal democracy exemplified in the ‘entrepreneurial’ activities of minor drug dealers and gangsters, and reflected in the architecture of business-parks and sink-estates. These preoccupations are also evident on his blog page. The political is also in evidence in his second collection of poetry Fahrenheit Says Nothing To Me. He is not a member of Aosdána, the Irish organization for writers and artists. In 2006, his first collection of short fiction, No Paradiso, appeared.
He reviews for The Irish Times and occasionally for literary journals. His work has been translated into several languages. He is a longtime sufferer from Still's Disease.

[edit] Publications

[edit] Novels

This Is The Country (Sceptre, London - 2005, TBD) ISBN 0-340-82215-5
The Map of Tenderness (Sceptre, London - 2003) ISBN 0-340-82214-7
Minding Children (Sceptre, London - 2001) ISBN 0-340-75188-6
Alice Falling (Sceptre, London, and WW Norton, New York - 2000) ISBN 0-340-75187-8

This Is The Country made the Man Booker Prize 2005 longlist.

[edit] Poetry

Fahrenheit Says Nothing To Me (Dedalus Press, Dublin, Ireland - 2004) ISBN 1-904556-21-3
Mathematics And Other Poems (Collins Press, Cork, Ireland - 1997) ISBN 1-898256-26-8