Short Stories, Novels and Spain. An Interview With Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín (Enniscorthy, 1955) is the author of five novels, The South (1990), The Heather Blazing (1992), The Story of the Night (1996), The Blackwater Lightship(1999) and The Master (2004). This last novel won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger for the best foreign novel published in 2005 in France, and it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Colm Tóibín has a long career in journalism and was the editor of the magazine Magill from 1982 to 1985. He is also the author of several non-fiction books, including Homage to Barcelona (1990) and The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994). He edited The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999) and has recently published his first book of short stories,Mothers and Sons (2006). Colm Tóibín attended the 10th International Conference on the Short Story in English, held at University College Cork on 19-21 June 2008, where this interview took place