Mike McCormack (writer)

Mike McCormack (born 1965) is an Irish novelist and short-story writer. He has published two collections of short stories, Getting It In the Head and Forensic Songs and four novels - Crowe's Requiem, Notes from a Coma, Solar Bones, and This Plague of Souls. He was described as "a disgracefully neglected writer"  early in his career, but the success of some of his later works and his tenure as a writing educator have brought him wide recognition today.

McCormack was born in London. He grew up on a farm in Louisburgh, County Mayo, and studied English and philosophy at UCG. In 1996, he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. In 1998, Getting It In the Head was voted a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A story from the collection, "The Terms", was adapted into an award-winning short film directed by Johnny O'Reilly.

In 2006, Notes from a Coma was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award. In 2010, John Waters in The Irish Times described it as "the greatest Irish novel of the decade just ended". It took McCormack seven years to write the book. In May 2016, Dublin publisher Tramp Press published his novel Solar Bones; this went on to win the Goldsmiths Prize. The book was unusual in that it was written as a single sentence (albeit a long one, that spans about 270 pages). Also in 2016, the book was named "Novel of the Year" by the Irish Book Awards.

He was elected to Aosdána in 2018.

In June 2018, McCormack won the Dublin Literary Prize of €100,000, the largest literary prize in the world for a single novel published in English, for his book Solar Bones.

He lives in Galway with his wife Maeve, where he works as a lecturer and director of NUI Galway's MA in Creative Writing.

Writings

 * 1996 - Getting It In the Head
 * 1998 - Crowe's Requiem
 * 2005 - Notes from a Coma
 * 2012 - Forensic Songs
 * 2016 - Solar Bones
 * 2023 - "This Plague of Souls"