Mary Lavin

Mary Lavin was born of Irish parents in East Walpole, Massachusetts. She moved to Ireland at the age of ten, living first in Athenry, Co. Galway, and later in Dublin. A graduate of University College Dublin, she was working for her doctorate when she wrote her first short story, 'Miss Holland'. By 1942, eleven of her stories had appeared in periodicals, as the London Good Housekeeping, the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Bazaar. A collection of her short stories won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Lavin continued writing up to the early eighties, producing some nineteen collections of short stories and contributing regularly to the New Yorker. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 and 1961, and she received the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1961. In 1968, Lavin received an honorary doctorate from her Alma Mater and, in 1992, she was elected Saoi by Aosdána. Mary Lavin died in Dublin in March of 1996.