People like Belinda McKeon

Belinda McKeon (born 1979) is an Irish writer. She is the author of two novels, Solace, which won the 2011 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and Tender (2015).

McKeon was born in Longford and attended Trinity College, Dublin, and University College, Dublin (UCD). From 2000 to 2010 she worked for The Irish Times, writing on theatre, literature and the arts. In 2005 she moved to New York City, where she completed an MFA at Columbia University.

McKeon's first novel, Solace, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Sunday Independent Best Newcomer Award and was named Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book of the Year in 2011, as well as being shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The Economist called Solace "a warm and wise debut", while The Irish Times described it as "at once a moving and gracefully etched story of human loss and interconnection set in contemporary Ireland and a deeply affecting meditation on being in the world".