Patricia Craig (writer)

Patricia Craig (born 1952) is a writer and anthologist from Northern Ireland, living in Antrim, County Antrim.

Personal life

She was born in Belfast and attended St Dominic's Grammar School for Girls before studying at the Belfast College of Art and then at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London (Diploma in Art & Design, Hons.). She returned to Northern Ireland in 1999.^[1] She is married to the Welsh artist Jeffrey Morgan.

Career

She has written memoirs, edited several anthologies and written articles for newspapers.^[2] In London she began to collaborate with Mary Cadogan editing several books on children’s literature. Their first book entitled “You’re a Brick Angela!” became a classic.^[3]

On her return to Northern Ireland she began to write books with an Irish theme. One of the first was a biography of Brian Moore which was described by the critic Seamus Deane as 'a crisp and intelligent account of a man and a writer for whom Craig's clean and incisive approach seems perfectly appropriate'.^[4] Perhaps her most popular book was the memoir 'Asking for Trouble' (1987) which details her school days culminating in her expulsion from school.^[5]

Awards

She was Honorary Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast where she was appointed to the Board of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.^[6][7]

Publications

• “You're a Brick Angela!: The Girls' Story 1839-1985” (1976)
• "Women and Children First: The Fiction of Two World Wars” (1978)
• “The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction” (1986)
• "The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories" (1990)
• “The Rattle of The North: An Anthology of Ulster Prose” (1992)
• "Brian Moore: A Biography" (1992)
• "The Penguin Book of British Comic Stories" (1992)
• "The Oxford Book of Modern Women's Stories" (1994)
• "The Oxford Book of Schooldays" (1995)
• "The Oxford Book of Travel Stories" (1996)
• "The Oxford Book of Ireland" (1998)
• "Twelve Irish Ghost Stories" (1998)
• “The Belfast Anthology” (1999)
• "The Oxford Book of Detective Stories" (2000).
• “Asking for Trouble” (2011)
• “A Twisted Root - Ancestral Entanglements in Ireland” (2012)
• “Bookworm, A Memoir of Childhood Reading” (2015)

References