Anne Enright

Anne Teresa Enright (born 11 October 1962) is an Irish writer. The first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015–2018) and winner of the Man Booker Prize, she has published eight novels, many short stories, and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children. Her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian. Her fiction explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.

Enright won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for her fourth novel The Gathering. Her second novel, What Are You Like?, was shortlisted in the novel category of the 2000 Whitbread Awards. 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.

Early life 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.

Enright was a television producer and director for RTÉ in Dublin for six years and produced the RTÉ programme Nighthawks for four years. 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." They have two children, a son and daughter.

Enright's second novel, What Are You Like?, was published in 2000. About twin girls called Marie and Maria who are separated at birth and raised apart from each other in Dublin and London, it looks at tensions and ironies between family members. It was shortlisted in the novel category of the Whitbread Awards.

Enright's third novel, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, published in 2002, is a fictionalised account of the life of Eliza Lynch, an Irish woman who was the consort of Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López and became Paraguay's most powerful woman in the 19th century.

Enright's 2004 book, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, is a collection of candid and humorous essays about childbirth and motherhood.

Her fourth novel, The Gathering, won the Man Booker Prize in 2007. The aide-de-camp of President McAleese acknowledged the result.

Enright's seventh novel, Actress, was selected for the longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020. It tells the story of a daughter detailing her mother's rise to fame in late twentieth-century Irish theatre, Broadway, and Hollywood.

Other 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. 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. 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. 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. Her writing is illustrated in the video "Reading Ireland". Enright received the Irish PEN Award for Literature in 2017.

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. TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes"The hotel"2017 "Solstice"2017

Nonfiction Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004)

Critical studies and reviews of Enright's work The Green Road

Honours and awards 1991: Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for The Portable Virgin 2001: Encore Award for What Are You Like? 2004: Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award 2007: Man Booker Prize for The Gathering 2012: Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist for The Forgotten Waltz 2012: Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for The Forgotten Waltz 2012: Honorary Degree (DLit) from Goldsmiths College, University of London 2016: Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for The Green Road 2021: Elected member of Aosdána - Irish Academy of Arts 2024: Women's Prize for Fiction - shortlisted for The Wren, The Wren 2025: Windham-Campbell Prize