Carlo Gébler

Carlo Gébler (born 21 August 1954) is an Irish writer, television director, and teacher. His publications include novels, short stories, plays, historical works and memoirs. He is a member of Aosdána.

Early life

Gébler was born in Dublin, the elder son of the Irish writers Ernest Gébler and Edna O'Brien, and was named Karl after Karl Marx. He moved with his parents to London in 1958. His parents separated in 1962. After the separation Carlo and his younger brother at first stayed with their father but later went to live with their mother. Carlo had a very difficult relationship with his father, from whom he was later estranged for many years.

Education Gébler attended Bedales School. As a child, he had a "fraught relationship" with his father, who placed "repeated emphasis on the boy's stupidity". In 2009 he was awarded a PhD by Queen's University Belfast.

Work Gébler directed his first film for television in 1979. He won the Best Regional Documentary RTS Award for his 1998 production Put to the Test.

In 2000 he published Father and I, a memoir of his relationship with his emotionally abusive father, from whom he was estranged for much of his life. The Times Literary Supplement'''s review of The Projectionist noted the author's "emotional empathy" and remarked that "this loving care gives the subject importance beyond the surface facts". Gébler's relationship with his father also figures largely in his 2015 memoir Confessions of a Catastrophist''.

From 1991 to 1997 Gébler worked with prisoners at the Maze Prison as a creative writing tutor. From 1997 to 2015 he was writer in residence at HM Prison Maghaberry. He has described his prison teaching experience as "a time when, I assert, I learnt more than at any other time in my life".

Gébler teaches a course on "Writing for a Living" at Trinity College Dublin's Oscar Wilde Centre, where he is an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing. He has also taught at Queen's University Belfast, where he was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow in 2009.