Nuala O’Connor was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1970, and divides her time between Counties Galway and Leitrim. She graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BA in the Irish language and from Dublin City University with an MA in Translation Studies.
In late 2022, Nuala won the writing.ie Irish Short Story of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards for her story ‘This Small Giddy Life’, from the New Island anthology, A Little Unsteadily Into Light.
Nuala’s fifth novel NORA (Harper Perennial/New Island, 2021), about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce, was recently published to critical acclaim in the USA, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Croatia, and the Netherlands, and is forthcoming in Estonia and Poland.
NORA was named as a Top 10 2021 historical novel by the New York Times and was the One Dublin One Book choice for 2022. Nuala curated the ‘Love, Says Bloom’ exhibition at MoLI, on the Joyce family, for #Ulysses100.
