WILLIAM WALL

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

Contents

Life & work

Publications

Novels

Poetry

Short stories

External links

Life & work

William Wall was born in Cork City in 1955, but grew up in the coastal village of Whitegate. 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 Patrick Kavanagh Award for poetry. 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 quirky 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.

Publications

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.

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

Short stories

★ ''No Paradiso'' (Brandon Books, Daingean, Ireland - 2006) ISBN 0-86322-355-9

External links

★ Author site: William Wall's Homepage

★ Download a copy of Mathematics & Other Poems for free under the Creative Commons Licence Download Poetry Collection

★ Interview with William Wall

★ William Stabile interviews William Wall (Italian)

★ Read one of William Wall's stories

★ Read a satirical short story by William Wall