Thomas Kilroy was born in 1934 in Callan, Co. Kilkenny. His novel The Big Chapel (1971) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1971, but he is best known as a playwright. His plays include The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche (1968); The O'Neill (1995); Sex and Shakespheare (1998); Talbot's Box (1979); The Seagull (1981); Double Cross (1986); The Madam MacAdam Travelling Theatre (Methuen Drama, 1992); and The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (1997). He has also adapted Ibsen's Ghosts (Peacock, 1989) and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (The Abbey, 1996). His awards include the Heinemann Award for Literature, The AIB Literary Prize, the American-Irish Foundation Award for Literature, The Rockefeller Foundation Residency, the Kyoto University Foundation Fellowship, and a Prix Nikki Special Commendation. He is a member of The Irish Academy of Letters, The Royal Society of Literature, and Aosdána.