Barry, Sebastian

(1955- )

   Irish playwright, novelist and poet, born in Dublin to Francis and Joan Barry and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1977. He has lived in France, Switzerland, England, Greece, Italy, and Iowa. He became an honorary writing fellow at the University of Iowa and now lives in County Wicklow, Ireland. His early plays include Boss Grady's Boys (1990), which opened in 1988 and won the BBC/Stewart Parker Award. The Steward of Christendom first played in 1995 and opened in January 1997 at the Majestic Theater, Broadway. It won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the Ireland/America Literary Prize, the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play, and the Writers' Guild Award (Best Fringe Play). His poetry collections: The Water-Colorist, 1983. The Rhetorical Town, 1985. Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever, 1987. The Pinkening Boy: New Poems, 2004. Some of his poems: "An Ending," "Cassibus Impositis Venor," "Christ-in-the-Woods," "Sketch from the Great Bull Wall," "The February Town," "The Indian River," "The Pardon of Assisi," "The Return," "The Room of Rhetoric," "The Winter Jacket," "The Wounds," "The Wrong Shoes."

   Sources: 1996-1998 Broadway Premieres. The Steward of Christendom (http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0152816.html). Sebastian Barry (http://www.contemporarywriters. com/authors/?p=auth02B11P375512626533). British Council Arts (http://www.contemporarywriters.com). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Inherited Boundaries: Younger Poets of the Republic of Ireland. Sebastian Barry, ed. The Dolmen Press, 1986. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Steward of Christendom, Details of the Play (http://www.glue.umd.edu/Barry, Sebastiansschreib/autumn_02/investigations/steward.html).