Dermot Bolger was born in Dublin. His nine novels include The Woman's Daughter, The Journey Home, Father's Music, The Valparaiso Voyage and the recently acclaimed The Family on Paradise Pier, which traces a real Irish family from the Great War through Ireland in the 1930s, The Spanish Civil War, the streets and gulags of Russia and London during the Blitz. His debut play, The Lament for Arthur Cleary, received The Samuel Beckett Award and his most recent play, From These Green Heights, won the Irish Times/ESB Award for Best New Irish Play of 2004. Author of seven volumes of poetry, he has been Playwright in Association with the Abbey Theatre and Writer Fellow in Trinity College, Dublin. Bolger has championed new Irish writers, firstly through Raven Arts Press, which he started as a factory hand, and later through co-founding New Island Books. He devised the best-selling collaborative novels, Finbar's Hotel and Ladies Night at Finbar's Hotel and edited The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction.