Belinda McKeon

Belinda McKeon (born 1979) is an Irish journalist, novelist, playwright and academic.

She worked as a journalist for The Irish Times from 2000 to 2010, writing on theatre, literature and the arts. She wrote the plays Word of Mouth (2005), Drapes (Dublin, 2006), and Graham and Frost (2010). McKeon published her first novel, Solace, in 2011. In 2022, she became the head of Maynooth University's Master of Arts in Creative Writing, having previously taught creative writing at Rutgers University

McKeon's novel Solace won the 2011 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, while Tender was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2015 Irish Book Awards. and the Sunday Independent Best Newcomer Award and was named Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book of the Year in 2011, as well as being shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The Economist called Solace "a warm and wise debut", while The Irish Times described it as "at once a moving and gracefully etched story of human loss and interconnection set in contemporary Ireland and a deeply affecting meditation on being in the world".

Her second novel Tender was published in 2015 to critical acclaim. Reviewing it for the Irish Times, author John Boyne called Tender "the best Irish novel I've read since The Spinning Heart, a work rich with wisdom, truth and beauty.", while the Guardian called it "richly nuanced and utterly absorbing." Tender was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2015 Irish Book Awards.

List of works

Novels Solace (Picador, 2011); (Scribner, 2011) Tender (Picador, 2015); (Lee Boudreaux, 2016)

Plays Word of Mouth (RTE radio drama, 2005) Drapes (part of Fishamble Theatre Company's Whereabouts, Dublin, 2006) Two Houses (one of two plays in Love 2.0, a Dublin Fringe Festival production in association with the Abbey Theatre, 2008) Graham and Frost (1st Irish Theater Festival, New York, 2010) Dropping Slow (RTE radio drama, 2012)

Short stories "Privacy" (Being Various, 2019)

Editor A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance (Tramp Press, 2015)

Awards 2005 RTE PJ O'Connor Radio Drama Award for Word of Mouth 2006 Irish Theatre Award for Drapes as part of Fishamble Theatre Company's Whereabouts 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival Audience Choice Award for Two Houses as part of Love 2.0, along with Philip McMahon's Investment Potential 2011 Sunday Independent Best Newcomer Award at the Irish Book Awards for Solace 2011 Irish Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards for Solace 2011 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Solace 2012 Shortlist for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Solace 2012 Shortlist for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year for Solace 2015 Shortlist for the Eason Bookclub Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards for Tender 2015 Shortlist for Encore Award for best second novel for Tender.