Donal Ryan, from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary,is the author of five number one-bestselling novels and a short story collection.He has won several awards for his fiction, including the European Union Prize for Literature,the Guardian First Book Award and four Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for several more, including the Costa Book Awardand the Dublin International Literary Award. He was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and again in 2018, for his fourth novel,From A Low and Quiet Sea. In 2021 he became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. A law graduate and former civil servant, Donal has lectured in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick since 2014 and lives in Castletroy with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.