Jo O’Donoghue

Maeve Binchy (born May 28, 1940) is an Irish novelist, newspaper columnist and speaker. Educated at University College Dublin, she worked as a teacher, then a journalist at The Irish Times and later become a writer of novels and short stories. Many of her novels are set in Ireland, dealing with the tensions between urban and rural life, the contrasts between England and Ireland, and the dramatic changes in Ireland between World War II and the present day. Her novel Circle of Friends was made into a 1995 Hollywood movie starring Chris O'Donnell and Minnie Driver with a radical change of ending. Binchy announced in 2000 that she would not be going on tours with any more novels, but would be devoting her time to other activities, and to her English-born husband, Gordon Snell, a children’s author. However, she has written four further novels since then: Quentins, Night of Rain and Stars, Whitethorn Woods, and Heart and Soul. In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob’s Award for her RTÉ play, Deeply Regretted By. A second award went to the lead actor, Donall Farmer.
Jo O’Donoghue was born in Co. Kerry in 1956 and educated at University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin, where she was awarded an M. Lit in modern English. She has lived in Dublin since the mid-1980s and has worked in publishing and related areas since 1988. She is the author of a critical study of the novelist Brian Moore (1990) and has edited several anthologies including Golden Apples: Irish Poems for Children (1995) and Taisce Duan (1992, with Sean McMahon). She is also the co-author (with Sean McMahon) of The Mercier Companion to Irish Literature (1998).
Sean McMahon was born in Derry in 1931 and educated at St. Derry’s Columbs College and in Queen’s University in Belfast. He returned to Derry to teach at St. Columbs and taught Mathematics until his retirement in 1988. During his teaching years he staged many productions of works by Shakespeare and modern dramatists both for St. Columbs and for amateur theater groups in Derry. He also wrote the lyrics for musical shows. His literary career properly began with his anthology The Best from the Bell, which was followed by A Book of Irish Quotations and Rich and Rare, an anthology of prose and verse. Over the past 20 years he has written and edited dozens of books, including biographies of Ulster writers Sam Hanna Bell and Robert Lynd, the bestselling A Short History of Ireland and books on all aspects of Irish life and culture, including A Short History of Ulster, The Island of Saints and Scholars and Irish Names for Children.