Colm Tóibín FRSL born (30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
His first novel, The South, was published in 1990. The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Master (a fictionalised version of the inner life of Henry James) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award, securing for Toíbín a bounty of thousands of euro as it is one of the richest literary awards in the world. Nora Webster won the Hawthornden Prize, whilst The Magician (a fictionalised version of the life of Thomas Mann) won the Folio Prize. His fellow artists elected him to Aosdána, and he won the biennial “UK and Ireland Nobel” David Cohen Prize in 2021.
He succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2017–2022. He is now Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in Manhattan.
Books in order of publication:
Novels
The South, Serpent’s Tail, 1990
The Heather Blazing, Picador, 1992
The Story of the Night, Picador, 1996
The Blackwater Lightship, McClelland and Stewart, 1999
The Master, Picador, 2004
Brooklyn, Dublin: Tuskar Rock Press, 2009
The Testament of Mary, Viking, 2012
Nora Webster, Scribner, 2014
House of Names, Scribner, 2017
The Magician, Scribner, 2021
Long Island: A Novel, Picador, 2024
Short fiction Collections
Mothers and Sons, Picador, 2006
The Empty Family, Penguin/Viking, 2010
Oak Lawn Library Friends 