Belinda McKeon, raised on a farm in County Longford, Ireland, studied English and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. In the years since, her articles on the arts and culture, and interviews with writers such as John McGahern, John Banville and Joan Didion, have graced the pages of The Irish Times, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The New York Times and other periodicals. Her produced plays include Word of Mouth (an RTE radio drama, 2005), Drapes (Dublin, 2006), and Graham and Frost (Irish Theatre Festival, New York, 2010). She curated the DLR Poetry Now Festival in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland (2008-2011) and, with her husband Aengus Woods, has curated the annual Poetry Fest at the Irish Arts Centre, New York, since 2009. Her first novel, Solace, was named Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book of the Year for its lyrical depiction of grief visited upon a family in rural Ireland. The novel also won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and The Sunday Independent Best Newcomer Award. Her second novel, Tender, has just been published in Ireland and the UK, and will be published in the US this June by Lee Boudreaux Books. Belinda McKeon lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Rutgers University.
