Life
Lecturer in education, Univ. of Ulster and occasional BBC Ulster broadaster; author of Booing the Bishop and Other Stories (1995), concerning one Jimmy Rice, an 11 year old growing up in Derry and Belfast of the 1950s; Only Human and Other Stories (1998), set in Omagh and Belfast; The Garden of Eden All Over Again (2002), a novel set in Omagh, and Leave of Absence (2005), a campus novel concerning Dr. Diarmiad Monaghan, plodding academic longing for sabbatical, when everything goes wrong.
Works
Booing the Bishop and Other Stories (Belfast: Blackstaff; Chester Springs: Dufour 1995), 130pp.; Only Human and Other Stories (Belfast: Blackstaff 1998), 144pp.; Leave of Absence (Dublin: TownHouse 2005), 292pp.; The Garden of Eden All Over Again (Dublin: TownHouse 2002), 293pp.
Miscellaneous, Educational Drama in the Secondary School: An Investigation of Theory and Practice (Newcastle UP 1980) [Ph.D. thesis; British Library Microfilm No. D36833/81]; with John O’Kane, Media in Education: Teachers at Work (UUC Fac. of Education [1994]), 75pp.
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Criticism
John Dunne. review of Only Human, in Books Ireland ( Sept. 1998), pp.212-13 [unenthusiastic]; Alan O’Riordan, review of Leave of Absence, in Books Ireland (Summer 2005) [‘rich possibilities’].
Quotations
Leave of Absence (2005): ‘I’ve been at my salary ceiling for six years, you gave me an extra ten hours a week on my timetable this year. I’ve applied twice for study leave to finish my pamphlet on Gaelic games in Protestant schools - and yes, yes, which would have given me a chance .. to become a Reader and so have less bloody teaching and more time to, well, not teach, my wife has started not sleeping with me, in forty years I’ll be either dead or eighty-five. And you ask me if my life is under control?’ (Quoted in Alan O’Riordan, review, in Books Ireland, Summer 2005, p.148.)
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