In profile: Sebastian Barry

Barry was nominated for the Man Booker prize last year

Irish playwright, novelist, and poet Sebastian Barry has won the Costa Book of the Year Award for his novel The Secret Scripture.

Born in 1955 in Dublin, Barry is best known as the author of such stage works as The Steward of Christendom and Our Lady of Sligo.

He was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, and subsequently returned there as a Writer Fellow in 1995. He is also an Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa.

The Steward of Christendom (1995) was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London and subsequently transferred to Broadway.

It won a number of awards including the Ireland/America Literary Prize, the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play and the Writers' Guild Award (Best Fringe Play). Barry also won the Lloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year award in the same year.

Barry's first novel, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, was published in 1998 and translated into seven languages.

This novel, and The Stewart of Christendom, were an exploration of people caught up in Irish political turmoil in the early part of the 20th century.

Barry's novel A Long Long Way was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, but the award eventually went to fellow Irish author John Banville.

'Unforgettable journey'

He was also the bookmakers' favourite to win the Booker Prize for The Secret Scripture last year, but that was pipped at the post by Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

His novel centres on elderly Roseanne McNulty, who faces an uncertain future as the hospital where she has spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure.

It tells her story, set in 1930s Ireland, through her memories and those of her psychiatrist. It was described by the Costa judges as an "exquisitely written love story".

"It takes you on an unforgettable journey - you won't read a better book this year."

Chairman of the judges Matthew Parris said the decision was an "extraordinarily close finish" with poet Adam Foulds' The Broken Word.

Parris said Barry won the award, formerly known as the Whitbread prize, despite the judges being unhappy with the ending.

He described the character of Roseanne as "one of the great narrative voices in contemporary fiction ... a lot of us thought that it was in its way a poem her voice is poetry."

Barry is also a children's author and a poet, with collections called the Water-Colourist and Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever.

He lives in County Wicklow, in the Irish Republic, with his wife and children.

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