Biography of Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan is an Irish short story writer, novelist, and creative-writing teacher whose critically acclaimed works have earned her a place in the Irish literary canon. Born in County Wicklow, Ireland (a region south of Dublin in the east of Ireland), Keegan grew up on a 53-acre rural farm as the youngest of seven children in a Catholic family. The Keegans ran a sheep, pig, and cattle farm, and the author cites her rural Catholic upbringing as a primary influence in her work. Although literacy was not strongly emphasized in Keegan's childhood home (where the only books she recalls seeing were an illustrated edition of the Bible, a cookbook, and the occasional stray commercial romance novel), she claims that this prompted her to strengthen her imagination. At age 17, she set out for New Orleans to double major in political science and literature at Loyola University, becoming the first person in her family to attend university. Under the academic tutelage of Mary McCay, Keegan began her initial literary studies. She later continued her education at the University of Wales (where she earned an MA in the Teaching & Practice of Creative Writing in 1995) and at Trinity College, Dublin (where she earned an MPhil in Creative Writing in 1999).

Upon returning home from New Orleans in 1992, Keegan struggled to find a job. She applied to 300 positions and faced rejection after rejection. However, she took advantage of this time to delve into reading and writing, which led her to publish short stories and win contests. Her debut short story collection Antarctica was published in 1999. It won numerous accolades, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the William Trevor Prize. Keegan's second short story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published in 2007, and her novella Foster appeared in 2010. The latter won the Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award, was anthologized in the Best American Short Stories 2011, and was adapted into the Academy Award-nominated film An Cailín Ciúin in 2022. Foster is also now included in the Irish Leaving Certificate curriculum. Keegan published another novella called Small Things Like These in 2021, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. Small Things Like These won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Ambassadors’ Prize for best Irish novel published in France, and The Kerry Prize for best Irish novel of the year. A film adaptation starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, and Eileen Walsh premiered in early 2024. Like Keegan's story Foster, her 2022 work So Late in the Day originally came out as a short story in The New Yorker, and was later released in a longer form by the publisher Faber & Faber.

Keegan's work is often praised for its brevity, and what she omits matters as much as what she explicitly writes. Keegan describes this efficiency in terms of "tact," sharing in interviews that graceful writing stems from saying just enough and no more. Thematically, Keegan's works often touch on violence, misogyny, and unspoken tensions, though she has stated that she does not focus on specific topics or themes during her writing process. Instead, she voices an interest "in how we cope, how we carry what’s locked up in our hearts" as human beings.