Irish · b. 1976
Donal Ryan has been longlisted for the Booker Prize twice—for "The Spinning Heart" in 2013 and "From a Low and Quiet Sea" in 2018. The Irish author writes about rural Ireland in crisis: recession, emigration, the collapse of traditional communities. His debut, rejected by forty-seven publishers, eventually won the Guardian First Book Award. Ryan gives voice to characters often silenced in literary fiction.