Lavin, Mary (1912–1996)

US-born Irish short-story writer and novelist. Her many collections, which focus on the complexities beneath the surface of small-town life in Ireland, include A Memory and Other Stories (1972), The Shrine and Other Stories (1977), A Family Likeness (1985), and The House in Clewe Street (1987). Her first collection Tales from Bective Bridge (1942) received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Other awards include the 1961 Katherine Mansfield prize, two Guggenheim awards, and the Gregory Medal, founded by W B Yeats as ‘the supreme award of the Irish nation’.

Lavin was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts, into an Irish immigrant family, who returned to Ireland when she was 14. After studying English at University College, Dublin, she went to live in County Meath. Her first short story, ‘Miss Holland’, was published in the Dublin Magazine, where it was admired by the writer Lord Dunsany, who encouraged her and later wrote an introduction to Tales from Bective Bridge. Apart from two early novels – The House in Clewe Street (1945) and Mary O'Grady (1950) – she concentrated on the short story.