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Maeve Binchy

© Megan Drummond

Maeve Binchy was born on March 28, 1940, in a small village outside of Dublin, Ireland. She grew up in the village where she was born, Dalkey, and attended school at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney. To this day, she draws upon her experiences in Dalkey and Killiney to create the rural Irish villages in her books.

Maeve earned a bachelor’s degree from University College in Dublin and quickly gained a teaching position. She taught at a Jewish school for eight years. Her teaching experiences and a vacation in Israel combined to lead Maeve to find work on a kibbutz, a communal farm in Israel.

While working on the kibbutz, Maeve sent a weekly letter to her father, describing life in a country that was constantly on the brink of war. When her father sent one of his daughter’s letters to The Irish Times, Maeve’s writing career began. He newspaper published the letter and paid Maeve 18 pounds ($25). Since she was only making 16 pounds ($22) at the school, Maeve thought she had truly “arrived.”

In 1969, she joined the staff of The Irish Times. Binchy was based in London, writing humorous columns from all over the world. After 10 years as a successful editor and columnist for the newspaper, Maeve decided to turn her attention to fiction.

Maeve Binchy sets most of her tales in Ireland or Great Britain. But because of the ordinary lives of the characters and characters that everyone can relate to, her stories have universal appeal. She also gives children major roles in most of her novels. According to Binchy, “Children are amazingly simple and honest a lot of the time – they say what needs to be said without wondering how it will make them look.”

Although she has written four volumes of short stories, two plays and a teleplay that won three awards at the Prague Film Festival, Maeve Binchy is best known for her novels, including Circle of Friends and Tara Road.

Maeve Binchy now lives in Dublin, Ireland, with her husband Gordon. The couple divides their time between Dublin and London.

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