Deane, Seamus (1940- )

Northern Irish poet, novelist, and academic. Born in Londonderry, Deane was educated in Belfast and Cambridge, and settled in Dublin in 1968. His work includes Gradual Wars (1972), one of the first poetry collections to take ‘the Troubles’ as its subject; the novel Reading in the Dark (1998), nominated for the Booker Prize and winner of The Guardian Fiction Prize and the Irish Times Fiction Award; and Wizard (1999).

Deane became a Fulbright lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley 1966-68, before returning to Ireland to take up the post of professor of Modern English and American literature at University College, Dublin. In 1971 he became co-director of the Field Day Theatre Company, an appointment he held until 1993. His three-volume Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing was published in 1991. He has also written a book of essays, Heroic Styles: The Tradition of an Idea (1985).