Tóibín, Colm, 1955-

Irish author Colm Tóibín was born in 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, to Bríd and Michael Tóibín. He graduated from University College Dublin in 1975. After graduating, he lived for three years in Barcelona, Spain, before returning to Ireland. He published his first novel, The South, in 1990, and is the author of a total of eleven novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary, Nora Webster, House of Names and The Magician. His work has been shortlisted for The Booker Prize three times, and has won the Costa Novel Award and the IMPAC Award. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. Tóibín was elected into Aosdána in 2021. In addition to writing, Tóibín was professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester, chancellor of the University of Liverpool (2017-2022), and Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He has been in a relationship with Hedi El Kholti, editor of the literary press Semiotext(e), since approximately 2012, and they were living in Los Angeles in 2026.