Philip Ó Ceallaigh
Born (1968-03-23) 23 March 1968
OccupationWriter
NationalityIrish
EducationPhilosophy
Alma materUniversity College Dublin (UCD)
GenreShort Story
Notable awardsRooney Prize for Irish Literature
2006

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (born 23 March 1968) is an Irish short story writer and translator who lives in Bucharest.

Ó Ceallaigh won the 2006 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was shortlisted twice (2006 and 2009) for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Biography

Ó Ceallaigh has spent much of his adult life in Eastern Europe, starting in Russia in the early nineteen-nineties. Since 1995 he has lived mostly in Romania. He also lived for a while in the United States.

He graduated from University College Dublin (UCD) with a degree in philosophy.[1]

After receiving his degree, Ó Ceallaigh travelled the world, doing a variety of jobs, including waiter, newspaper editor, freelance journalist and volunteer for clinical trials.[1] He moved to Bucharest so that he could live cheaply and pursue his desire to write.[1]

He speaks six languages.[1]

He went to school with Sinéad O'Connor, who was in his class. He once told an interviewer: "She told me she wanted to become famous and I tried to talk her out of it".[2]

Work

He has published over 40 short stories, as well as essays and criticism. His work has appeared in Granta, the Irish Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

In 2010, he edited Sharp Sticks, Driven Nails, an anthology of new short stories by twenty-two Irish and international writers, for The Stinging Fly Press.

He translated Mihail Sebastian's autobiographical novel For Two Thousand Years. It tells the story of the author's early years as a Jew in Romania during the 1920s. It was published in 2016.[3]

He has written an unpublished novel but reduced it to a long short story and believes "if you've got something to say and you can say it with less, that's the way to go."[1]

The first story in his third collection, Trouble, involves a security guard and the theft of sum of money from a gangster. Ó Ceallaigh used time he spent as a security guard in Dublin to form the basis of this fiction.[2]

Style

Ó Ceallaigh eschews the prevailing style of Irish short story writing in that his works are rarely set in Ireland, and instead are set in a variety of locations across the world, predominantly in Romania. His stories generally feature solitary men, with women playing more incidental roles.

He has acknowledged being influenced in his writing style by Charles Bukowski, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Ivan Turgenev.

Reception

Eve Patten, in The Irish Times, praised his "ambitiousness with the short story shape", and "his break from the grip of ingrained Irish modes".[4]

Michel Faber, in The Guardian, described his control of tone, dialogue and narrative contour as "masterful".[5]

Awards and honours

Hennessy Award for his first published work in 1998.

Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, for his collection Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse in 2006.

Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse won the 2006 Glen Dimplex New Writers' Award.[1][6]

He was the first Irish writer to be shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (for Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse in 2006).[7] His second collection, The Pleasant Light of Day, was also shortlisted for the 2009 award.

List of works

  • Notes From a Turkish Whorehouse (2006), ISBN 1-84488-075-3
  • The Pleasant Light of Day (2009), ISBN 978-1-84488-186-4
  • Trouble (2021), ISBN 978-1-906539-86-3

List of translations

  • For Two Thousand Years, Mihail Sebastian (2016). ISBN 978-0-241-18961-0
  • Women, Mihail Sebastian (2020). ISBN 978-0-241-44290-6

As editor

  • Sharp Sticks, Driven Nails, Philip Ó Ceallaigh (2010). ISBN 978-1-906539-15-3

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Tyaransen, Olaf (20 December 2006). "Notes from a library bar". Hot Press. Retrieved 20 December 2006. But Ó Ceallaigh claims not to be bothered. He's had a nice catch-up trip to family and friends in his native Waterford, given his first-ever public readings in Cork, and has a Hot Press interview to do before returning to Romania in the morning.
  2. 1 2 Bielenberg, Kim (5 June 2021). "WriteSide: Philip Ó Ceallaigh on moving to Bucharest, his hippy inclination and his famous classmate". Irish Independent.
  3. ↑ Bailey, Paul (19 March 2016). "'I am ashamed to be sad': the remarkable story of a Jewish student in 1920s Romania". the Guardian. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  4. ↑ Patten, Eve (21 February 2009). "When time slows down". The Irish Times.
  5. ↑ Pauli, Michelle (18 July 2006). "Publicity for world's richest short story prize as big names make the final line-up". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 July 2006.
  6. ↑ "Irish writers win three Dimplex awards". The Irish Times. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  7. ↑ "Frank O'Connor Awards shortlist announced". RTÉ Entertainment. Raidió Teilifís Éireann. 17 July 2006. Retrieved 17 July 2010.
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