User:GeorgeK1999/sandbox

Later Life
During his later years, MacMahon paid more attention to the media while continuing to publish. Together with John B. Keane as well as other Irish playwrights, he founded Listowel Writers' Week in 1970, an international literacy festival based in MacMahon's home town of Listowel. In 1989, MacMahon featured on the The Late Late Show, with Gay Byrne. MacMahon published his first autobiography, The Master, in 1992, which documented his career in teaching. The book went on to win the 1993 The American Ireland Literary Award. MacMahon released a second autobiography in 1994, The Storyman, which focused primarily on his career as a writer.

Throughout his career, MacMahon was awarded many accolades for his contributions to Irish literature including the Kerryman of the Year award in 1987. He also was awarded American Ireland Fund Literary Award 1993 and the award of the degree of LID from the National University of Ireland in recognition of his work. MacMahon was a member of the Aosdána. MacMahon's final book, a collection of fictional conversations between men and women, is entitled A Final Fling, and was published in 1998. MacMahon died on the 13 February 1998, in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. After his death, his colleague John B. Keane said: "The streets have lost their star. He was a giant and a gentleman, and we were lucky to have had him for so long."