Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His novels and plays have won the Costa Book of the Year Award, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
He also had two consecutive novels, A Long Long Way (2005) and the top ten bestseller The Secret Scripture (2008), shortlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. Days Without End (2016) won the Costa Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in County Wicklow.