“You have to be a terrible monster to write.” ~ Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. Currently a Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, Colm has won innumerable awards for his fiction and is also a renowned literary critic. The fourth of five children, Colm was born in Enniscorthy in Ireland. In boarding school, he became a voracious reader, and he went on to graduate from University College Dublin. Immediately after college, he moved to Barcelona and taught English for three years before returning to Ireland to begin a career in journalism.
His most recent book, Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know, explores the fathers of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce.
“Tóibín's success comes down to the power of his writing: an almost unfaultable combination of artful restraint and wonderfully observed detail” Mary Beard, New York Times