Peter Cunningham

Much of Peter Cunningham’s childhood was divided between Sutton, County Dublin, where his mother came from, and Waterford, his father’s home town. Although Peter wrote continuously in school, in university and as a young adult, he also worked in a variety of other jobs.

His first novels, beginning with Noble Lord in 1986, were thrillers. Following the death of his eldest son, also Peter, in 1990, the direction of his writing changed. He began to write contemporary fiction, based on life in Waterford, which he fictionalised as Monument, a port town in Ireland’s south east. Beginning with Tapes of the River Delta (1995), these novels have been widely acclaimed. Consequences of the Heart (1998), which has been translated into Italian, was shortlisted for the Listowel Writer’s Prize; The Sea and the Silence (2009) won the prestigious Prix de l’Europe. His novel Capital Sins (2011), for which Cunningham was described by the Irish Times newspaper as “the Hemmingway of the Celtic Tiger”, was a satire set in the Irish economic meltdown. Acts of Allegiance was widely acclaimed on publication in 2017 and subsequently nominated for the Dublin International Literary Award. Cunningham was one of the nominees in 2017 for the Laureate for Irish Fiction, a new role inaugurated by the Arts Council of Ireland.

He is also a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of arts and letters.