Diarmaid Ó Súilleabháin (writer)

Ó Súilleabháin was born at the Beara Peninsula in County Cork. His mother was a primary school teacher and his father a small farmer.[1] He married Úna Ní Chléirigh in 1954, and they had two sons and three daughters.[1] He died on 5 June 1985.[1]

He settled in Gorey and worked there as a primary teacher for the Christian Brothers school.[2]

He is best known now for his literary work. He wrote ten novels, two of them for teenagers.[1] Maeldún was a pioneering Irish novel that explored sexuality.[3] He wrote seven unpublished plays.[1] Three plays that he wrote include Bior, Ontos, and Macalla and he wrote a collection of short stories, Muintir.[2] A story from Muintir called 'D' was translated into English and adapted for the stage by Vivian McAlister and was performed by Dublin University Players in May 1977.[4]

Like Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, he "challenged the critical orthodoxy by openly proclaiming that their standards could not be those of the Gaeltacht and by demanding a creative freedom that would acknowledge hybridity and reject the strictures of the linguistic purists."[5] He and Máirtín Ó Cadhain were considered the two most innovative Irish language authors to emerge in the 1960s.[2][3] He often wrote in a stream of consciousness, and his style influenced younger writers. His writing "explores the problem of recovering idealism and cultural wholeness in an increasingly shallow and materialistic Irish society."[3] Ó Súilleabháin was elected as a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and won more literary prizes than any other living Irish author.[1][2]

He wrote a collection of poetry, Cosa Gréine, which was published and launched in Dublin in 2013, 28 years after his death.[2]

Ó Súilleabháin was an active Irish republican, particularly in publicizing the republican struggle, and was a member of Sinn Féin's ruling body beginning in 1971.[1][2] He spent short periods in prison because of activities related to his political beliefs.[1]

• Súil le Muir, Cló Mórainn, 1959 (for teenagers)
• Trá agus tuileadh, Sáirséal agus Dill, 1967 (for teenagers)
• Caoin tú féin, Sáirseál agus Dill, 1967
• An Uain Bheo, Sáirséal agus Dill, 1968
• Muintir, Sáirséal agus Dill, 1970 (short stories)
• Maeldún, Sáirséal agus Dill, 1972
• Dianmhuilte Dé, Sáirseál agus Dill, 1964
• Ciontach, Coiscéim 1983
• Aistear, Coiscéim, 1983
• Bealach Bó Finne, Coiscéim, 1988
• Lá Breá Gréine Buí and Oighear Geimhridh, Coiscéim 1994

• Brian Ó Conchubhair; Philip O’Leary (6 January 2015). "The Canon in Irish Language Fiction". Dublin Review of Books.