The Laureate for Irish Fiction Annual Lecture 2023: ‘A Dream on Wings: Poetry and the Underworld’ with Colm Tóibín

Seamus Heaney HomePlace is honoured to welcome the Laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín, who will present his second Annual Laureate Lecture in The Helicon.

The Laureate for Irish Fiction is an initiative of the Arts Council. The role seeks to acknowledge the contribution of fiction writers to Irish artistic and cultural life by honouring an established Irish writer of fiction, encouraging a new generation of writers, promoting Irish literature nationally and internationally and encouraging the pubic to engage with high-quality Irish fiction.

Colm Tóibín is the author of ten novels, including The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections, a poetry collection and several books of criticism. His plays include The Testament of Mary, nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.

In 1993 he was elected to Aosdána and in 2020 became a vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has won the EM Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, the Richard C Holbrooke Distinguished Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the David Cohen Prize. He was awarded the Bodley Medal in 2023 for his sustained contribution to the world of literature and his eleventh novel, Long Island, will be published in May 2024.