Jennifer Johnston

Jennifer Johnston was born in Dublin, the daughter of dramatist Denis Johnston and actress and director Shelah Richards. She was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and settled in Derry in the 1970s. Johnston's novels are informed by an acute awareness of the divisions running not only across the country, but also across human relations and in them she continually explores possibilities of building spaces where conflicting identities can co-exist. Her first novel, The Captains and the Kings (1972), was published to great acclaim and won the Robert Pitman Award and the Yorkshire Post Prize. Since then, Jennifer Johnston has written twelve novels, some of which have been adapted for TV. Shadows on our Skin (1977) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and The Old Jest won the Whitbread Award for the best novel of 1979. A selection of her plays was published in 2003 by New Island Books. Johnston's most recent novels are Grace and Truth (2005), Foolish Mortals (2007) and Truth or Fiction (2009). Jennifer Johnston was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Irish Book Awards in 2012 and is a member of Aosdána.