Anne Enright

Her fiction explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.[3] Enright won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for her fourth novel The Gathering. Her second novel, What Are You Like[29]?, was shortlisted in the novel category of the 2000 Whitbread Awards.[12] Her 2012 novel The Forgotten Waltz won the Andre Carnegie Medal for Fiction. Her novel The Green Road was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and won The Irish Novel of the Year (2015). In 2025, Enright was named as a recipient of a Windham-Campbell Prize, awarded in recognition of her life's work.[4]

Anne Enright studied at Trinity College, Dublin, University of East Anglia and Pearson College UWC. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is essay, creative and professional writing and prose. Works named in the authority record are The Gathering. Work by Anne Enright is recorded in the collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Distinctions recorded are Booker Prize, Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

• Name — Anne Enright • Birth Name — Anne Teresa Enright • Born — 11 October 1962 • Birthplace — Dublin, Ireland • Occupation — Writer • Education — * Trinity College Dublin • University of East Anglia • Period — Contemporary • Genre — Novel, short story • Subject — Family Love Motherhood[1] • Notable Works — * Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004) The Gathering (2007) • Spouse — Martin Murphy • Children — 2 • Awards — Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, 1991 Encore Award, 2001 Man Booker Prize, 2007 Irish Novel of the Year, 2008 • Years Active — 1991–present

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, Ireland, and was educated at St Louis High School, Rathmines. She won an international scholarship to Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, where she studied for an International Baccalaureate for two years. She then completed a BA in English and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. She began writing in earnest when she was given an electric typewriter for her 21st birthday. She won a Chevening Scholarship to the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course, where she studied under Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury and completed an MA degree.[5] Enright was a television producer and director for RTÉ in Dublin for six years[8] and produced the RTÉ programme Nighthawks for four years. She then worked in children's programming for two years and wrote on weekends. She began writing full-time in 1993.[9] Her full-time career as a writer came about when she left television due to a breakdown, later remarking: "I recommend it [...] having a breakdown early. If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. It's the people who are always on the brink of crisis who don't hit bottom who are in trouble." Of her time spent working behind the scenes as a producer, Enright said: "There was a great buzz and sometimes I felt like awarding myself purple hearts for the work I was doing." It was a time of "drinking too much" and "hanging around" with people "who don't really have steady jobs".

Enright lives in Dublin, having previously lived in Bray, County Wicklow, until 2014. She is married to Martin Murphy, who was director of the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire and now works as an adviser to the Arts Council of Ireland.[10] They have two children, a son and daughter.

Her writing has appeared in various magazines and newspapers. The New Yorker has published her writing in seven years over two decades: 2000, 2001 and 2005, 2007, 2017, 2019 and 2020.[16] The 4 October 2007 issue of the London Review of Books published Enright's piece "Disliking the McCanns" about Kate and Gerry McCann, the British parents of the three-year-old child Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in suspicious circumstances while on holiday with her family in Portugal in May 2007.[17] Mary Kenny described Enright as "irrationally prejudiced", a woman with "bad judgement", and questioned an apology which Enright issued. Enright was once a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, and has also reviewed for RTÉ.[21] She has also been in The Dublin Review, The Irish Times, The Guardian, Granta and The Paris Review. In 2011, the Irish Academic Press published a collection of essays about her writing, edited by Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill.[24] Her writing is illustrated in the video "Reading Ireland".[25] Enright received the Irish PEN Award for Literature in 2017.[26] Taoiseach Enda Kenny appointed Enright as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. During her time as Laureate for Irish Fiction, Enright promoted people's engagement with Irish literature through public lectures and creative writing classes. She later took up teaching at UCD's School of English, beginning in the 2018–19 academic year.

• The Wig My Father Wore (1995) • What Are You Like? (2000) • The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002) • The Gathering (2007) • The Forgotten Waltz (2011) • The Green Road (2015) • Actress (2020) • The Wren, the Wren[37] (2023)

• Collections • The Portable Virgin (1991); • Taking Pictures (short story collection) (2008); • Yesterday's Weather (2009); • Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World (2025); • Stories[27] • Title — |Year — |First published — |Reprinted/collected — |Notes • "The hotel" — 2017 • "Solstice" — 2017

• Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004)

• The Green Road *