Colm Tóibín is a multi-award winning Irish novelist and critic. A regular contributor to newspapers and magazines such as the London Review of Books, his first novel, The South (1990), was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for First Book. Colm's next publication, The Heather Blazing (1992) won the Encore Award for the best second novel of the year and two subsequent novels, The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes work on Irish history, Catholicism and gay lives. His latest book is a collection of short stories, Mothers and Sons (2006).

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