Desmond Hogan

Hogan was born in Ballinasloe in east County Galway. His father was a draper.[1] Educated locally at St. Grellan's Boys' National School and St. Joseph's College, Garbally Park, some of his earliest work was published in The Fountain, the Garbally college annual.

After leaving school, Hogan travelled to France, ending up in Paris just after the student riots of 1968.[1] He later studied at University College Dublin (UCD), where he received a BA in 1972 and an MA in 1973.

In 1971 he won the Hennessy Award. The Irish Writers' Co-operative, formed by writer Fred Johnston, Neil Jordan and playwright Peter Sheridan at a meeting in a Dublin restaurant, were to publish Hogan's The Ikon Maker, which was also the Co-op's first publication. While in Dublin, he worked as a street actor and had a number of plays – A Short Walk to the Sea, Sanctified Distances, and The Squat – produced in the Abbey Theatre and the Project Arts Centre. RTÉ and BBC Radio broadcast some of his plays, including Jimmy. He also published stories in small magazines such as Adam and the Transatlantic Review.

Later he moved to London, living in Tooting, Catford and Hounslow and then later as a lodger in the Hampstead home of Anthony Farrell, a young Irish publisher. Friends and acquaintances from this period included: writer Jaci Stephen, biographer Patrick Newley, Kazuo Ishiguro and his partner, Lorna.[1] Hogan also participated in poetry and literature readings held at Bernard Stone's Turrett Bookshop on Floral Street in Covent Garden.

His debut novel, The Ikon-Maker, was written in 1974 and published in 1976. It deals with a mother's unwilling recognition of her son's homosexuality.[1]

In 1977, he was the recipient of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, though this event remained undiscovered in America for several years until the Pittsburgh Press reported the revelation to its readers in 1981.[5] In 1978, he participated in the Santa Cruz Writers Conference. In the early 1980s, Hogan was represented by Deborah Rogers' literary agency, which also had Peter Carey, Bruce Chatwin, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie on its books.[1] In 1980, he won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for his Diamonds at the Bottom of the Sea collection of short stories. In 1981, he appeared in Granta.[1]

In 1989, Hogan left London and was a Hudson Strode Fellow at the University of Alabama. In 1991, Hogan was awarded a place on the DAAD (German Academic Exchange) Berlin Artists' Programme fellowship which enabled him to live in that city. It was in Berlin that he fell in love with a young man called Sammy (who died, apparently of AIDS-related illness, a few years later), with whom he traveled. These travels together yielded a collection travel writing, The Edge of the City: A Scrapbook 1976-1991, in 1993. After this, Hogan moved on to Prague, grief-stricken, where he wrote Farewell to Prague (1995).[1]

Hogan returned to Ireland in 1995, living in Clifden, County Galway.[1] For a period, he lived in an old caravan in County Limerick along North Kerry/West Limerick border. In 1997, he lectured in short fiction at the University of California, San Diego.

He was a judge in the 2005 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, worth €50,000.

Interested in history, painting, traveller culture, he has used a typewriter since he was a child and finds the modern transition to computers difficult.[6] Suspicious of the telephone, he prefers to communicate using postcards.[1]

Hogan was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. The assault happened on 11 November 2006 in a house Hogan was renting. He was given a two-year suspended jail sentence, placed on the sex offenders register, and ordered not to have unsupervised contact with children. The judge, Carroll Moran, made the judgement that there was a "moderate to low" likelihood of recidivism for Hogan. However, Hogan's parole officer, Nora Brassil, stated in an earlier hearing that Hogan saw the assault as "a mutual sexual incident/ relationship". She was concerned that if Hogan did not see what he had done as wrong, he might transgress again.[7]

• 1970s: Participated in readings in The Sarsfield Bar, Rutland Street. Limerick. Organised by John Liddy.
• 26 July 1989: Galway Arts Centre, Galway Arts Festival.
• 2002: Sean Dunne Literary festival
• 21–22 September 2002: Annual International Frank O'Connor Festival of the Short Story
• 8 July 2004. Dublin. Launch of Munster Literature Centre journal Southword
• 2004: Galway County Library
• 20 April 2005: Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Galway (along with Ronan Bennett)

Hogan features in a number of major anthologies of modern Irish literature.

William Trevor included him in The Oxford Book of Irish Stories and Colm Tóibín selected his story "Winter Swimmers" for The Penguin Book of Irish Writing.[1]

He appears in The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing.[8]

He appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press).[9]

Another Irish writer Colum McCann, claims that Hogan, along with Benedict Kiely, is one of two Irish writers who have influenced him greatly.

Joyce Carol Oates, an American writer, much admires his story "Winter Swimmers".[1]

According to Robert McCrum, former Literary Editor of The Observer, Hogan is "one of Ireland's finest writers".[1]

• 1971 Hennessy Award
• 1977 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature
• 1980 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize

• Paul Deane, "The Great Chain of Irish Being Reconsidered: Desmond Hogan's A Curious Street", Notes on Modern Irish Literature, vol. 6, 1994, pp. 39–47.
• Theo D’Haen, "Desmond Hogan and Ireland’s Postmodern Past", in Joris Duytschaever/Gert Lernout (eds.), History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, pp. 79–84.
• Theo D’Haen, "Desmond Hogan and Ireland’s Postmodern Past", in Birgit Bramsback/Martin Croghan (eds.), Anglo-Irish and Irish Literature: Aspects of Language and Culture, Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1988, vol II, pp. 137–142.
• Jerry Nolan, "Travelling With Desmond Hogan: Writing Beyond Ireland", ABEI Journal – The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies, Special Issue No. 5, June 2003.
• Susan Rochette-Crawley, "'The Awkward Grace of a Legend:' Violence and Transfiguration in Desmond Hogan's The Children of Lir".

• Desmond Hogan Archived 17 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine at Irish Writers Online
• Desmond Hogan at Irish Playography
• Lilliput Press, the author's publisher
• Donoghue, Denis. "Making the most of Dublin", The New York Times, 16 July 1989