Deirdre Madden is one of Ireland’s leading authors. In understated, but resonant, prose she returns again and again to themes of memory, identity, the complexity of family relationships, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the integrity of the artistic life. Her work has won many prizes and has been widely translated into other languages.

Deirdre Madden was born in 1960 into a Northern Irish Catholic family in Toomebridge, County Antrim, the setting for some of her novels. Her father was a sand merchant, her mother a teacher. The outbreak of the Troubles in the North disrupted what was otherwise a happy childhood spent reading books. Despite the political tensions, a successful school career led her in 1979 to study English at Trinity College Dublin where she has said she felt immediately at home. While still a student, her first short stories were published in The Irish Press by David Marcus, the editor who launched the careers of so many Irish writers. This early success inspired Madden to pursue a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, the springboard for much fine contemporary writing. At UEA, she studied with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter.

The clarity and understated lyricism of Deirdre Madden’s writing has attracted praise from fellow authors of the calibre of Richard Ford, Sebastian Barry, and Anne Enright. Writing in The Daily Telegraph Adam O’Riordan commented: ‘For almost thirty years, Irish writer Deirdre Madden has published novels of quiet and subtle brilliance’ (6 June 2013). The subtle quality of her writing requires an equally perceptive response from her readers. Such is her accuracy as a writer that to read one of Madden’s novels is less like reading fiction than to experience life unfolding. Her widely acknowledged skill as a novelist and her insightful observations on themes as universal as violence, integrity, family relationships and friendship ensure that her work will endure and continue to attract new readers.

 
‘Deirdre Madden’ by Heather Ingman at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitywriters. First published January 2016.

 

Photo credit: Mark Condren