Mary Morrissy was born in Dublin where she still lives. She has published two collections of short stories, A Lazy Eye (1993) and Prosperity Drive (2016), and two novels inspired by true events: Mother of Pearl (1995), the story of a stolen infant, and The Pretender (2000), a fictional history of the Polish woman who claimed to be Anastasia, daughter of the last Romanov Tsar. Morrissy has taught in creative writing programmes at the Universities of Arkansas and Iowa in the US as well as in Trinity College, Dublin. A third novel, The Rising of Bella Casey, based on the life of Bella O'Casey, sister of the famous Irish playwright, was published in 2013. 

She has won the Hennessy Award and the Lannan Foundation Award and is a member of Aosdana since 2015. Currently she works as a literary critic, a writing coach and an editor with a 30 years' experience. Her forthcoming novel Penelope Unbound will be published by Banshee Press in September 2023. 

 

Photo credit: Colbert Kearney