Enright, Anne (1962-…), an Irish author, won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering (2007). The award, now known as the Booker Prize, is the United Kingdom’s best-known literary award. Enright’s novel is an intense and often grim story about a troubled Irish-Catholic family. The central character is the middle-aged Veronica Hegarty. The suicide of her favorite brother, Liam, forces the grieving Veronica to examine her relationship to her family as well as her marriage. Critics praised The Gathering for its unflinching realism and its lyrical prose.
Enright’s first published book was a collection of short stories, The Portable Virgin (1991). Her short stories were also collected in Taking Pictures (2008) and Yesterday’s Weather (2009). She joined six other Irish writers in contributing stories to a collection called Finbar’s Hotel (1999). Enright wrote the novels The Wig My Father Wore (1995), What Are You Like? (2000), The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002), The Forgotten Waltz (2011), The Green Road (2015), and Actress (2020). Her essays on motherhood were collected in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004).
Enright was born in Dublin on Oct. 11, 1962. She studied at Trinity College in Dublin and earned an M.A. degree at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Enright was a television producer in Dublin before turning to writing full-time in 1993.
