Michael G. Casey was born in Naas, grew up in New Ross and now lives in Dublin, Ireland, married with three sons. An economist by training (i.e. an accountant with personality), he found it relatively easy to transition to literature (his first love.) He believes that some economic concepts are helpful in writing novels, e.g. the law of diminishing returns, or knowing when to stop!
His experiences in university (Dublin and Cambridge) and his extensive travels around the world, as well as his work in Development Cooperation, gave him an abiding interest in human diversity, cultural differences, anthropology, and story-telling.
He writes about seemingly ordinary people who, when catastrophe strikes, react in extraordinary ways, drawing on deep instincts – love or hate, forgiveness or a desire for revenge, acceptance or denial. He finds people endlessly fascinating and doesn’t need to stray into the realms of science fiction, fantasy or action-packed technical wizardry. For him, novels and short stories are about people living in the real world.
For this reason he enjoys working with actors when directing plays with the Umbrella Theatre Company. Feedback from actors is vital for his plays and, indeed other forms of fiction. Actors have given him invaluable help in getting characters right.
He sometimes finds it difficult to stick to particular ‘genres’ because modern life, in all its marvellous, multicultural variety, does not fall neatly into prescribed categories which are, in any case, rather old-fashioned. There are elements of crime, horror, romance etc. in all of his novels but, as in life, no one element dominates
He has published five novels to date, a book of non-fiction, an award-winning chapbook of short fiction, and he will be publishing a collection of poetry early in 2019, and another novel later in the year. Many of his plays have been produced on stage in different theatres in Dublin, and one, by invitation, in the Henrik Ibsen Museum, Oslo.
He writes occasionally for the Irish Times and Sunday Times.
He has won many awards, national and international, for fiction, poetry and plays, and has been anthologised with writers such as Seamus Heaney, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott, Billy Collins, Jorge Luis Borges. He continues to appreciate and follow the advice of Samuel Beckett to ‘fail better’.
Poetry
Flight, Winner, Georgia Poetry Society Award 2003, Anthologised in GPS Anniversary Collection, The Reach of Song, 2003
A Fate Takes a Holiday, Winner Atlanta Review Prize 2003, Atlanta Review, 2003, anthologised in The Gift of Experience, Summer 2005
The Still Centre, Winner, Writers’ Week Listowel Winners Volume, 2000
Riverrun, Winner , Siarscéal, Castlerea 2008
A Mandolin Hung in the Shed, Envoi, No 134, Feb 2003
Another Presence, ibid.
A Splinter of Light, Poetry Ireland, No 72, 2002
Straight as a Die, Staple, No 41, 1998
Greyhound, Staple, No 36, 1996
Altersuggestion, Staple, No 41, 1998
Geologists, Poetry Ireland, No 72, 2002
Grey, Envoi, No 134, 2003
Sandman’s Lullaby, Poetry Ireland, No 54, 1997
Back to the World, ibid.
An Historical Footnote, Staple No. 40, Winter 1997
Altersuggestion, ibid.
Touch, Poetry Ireland, No 60, 1999
Geologists, Poetry Ireland, No 72, 2002
Water Play (short-listed for Clogh Award)
The Loss that Height Entails (shortlisted for Strokestown Award)
Hiding in Plain Sight (accepted for Publication by Alan Ross, London Quarterly)
Monet: Musée Marmottan (shortlisted for Listowel Prize)
Under a Black Flag (Oxfam Calendar Award, 2007)
A Presleytarian Church, Jazzclaw, 2003
A Round Tower, Bardsong, 2002
Give or Take a Lustrum, Bardsong, 2002
Blurred Divide, shortlisted for Tonbridge Wells Award, Windows Anthology, Worple Press,2007
Just Marbles, shortlisted for Clogh Award, 2005
Arctic Opera, Stinging Fly, Winter 2008.
Cooling the Heart, Convergence, 2008
The Blind Empiricist, Convergence, 2008
Cormorant Fisherman, Cyphers, 2010
Bulloch Harbour, Gregory O’Donoghue Prize, Southward Journal, 2011
Leavened Bread, Prize-Winner, Boyle Arts Festival, 2009
Clouds Cease Drifting, Revival, Jan 2008
With Sleeves Rolled Up, Certificate of Merit, Golden Pen Competition, 2009
Such Closeness, Certificate of Merit, Golden Pen Competition, 2009
The Adaptation of Mr Fitzgerald, R*K*V*Ry, 2010
Caoilte, Galway Ropes, 2011
I Know the Score, Honourable Mention, Lucidity Poetry Journal
International Poetry Competition, 2011
An Exaltation of Larks, The Stony Thursday Book, 2011
Tolstoy’s Myriad Landscapes, Poetry Ireland, 2012
The Sea’s Uncertainty, Highly Commended, Siarscéal Festival 2012
Going Home that November, Cyphers, 2012
The Horseman Dream, Abridged, 2013
Love Poem, Atlanta Review, Spring / Summer 2013
Guitar in Shop Window, Atlanta Review, Spring / Summer 2013
Allotment, Iota Magazine, 93-94, 2013
Feeling The Eclipse, Iota Magazine, 93-94, 2013
Blending, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, The Edition, 2014
Clotho Learns to Knit, Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual, 2014
Lost Place, The Shop, 2014
Backs of Houses, ibid. 2014
Fever Sheds, ibid. 2014
Dura Mater Caves, The Shop, 2014
The Shape of Rain, Yeovil Literary Prize-Winning Anthology, 2012 and 2013
A Plane at Night, Cyphers, 2014
Snapshot and Waffles, Orbis, 2014
Jacks for Office, Hungry Hill Writing Prize, 2015
English Speaks Seductively, Hungry Hill, Highly Commended, 2015
Second Feature At The G.P.O., Hungry Hill, Commended, 2015
Shock and Awe, Hungry Hill, Commended, 2015
Always in Search, Goldsmith Poetry Prize, 2015
The Climber Thinks of Home, Highly Commended, Francis Ledwidge International Award, 2015
Death of Cuchulainn?, Prize-winner, Reclaim 1916 International Poetry Competition, 2016
Arising out of Darkness, Chosen for Limerick Writers’ 1916 Anthology, 2016
Mouse Throw, Southword Journal, Munster Poetry, 2017
Palmer, Highly Commended, Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Award, 2016
Atrium, Stepaway Magazine, Spring 2017
Mr. Photon, Orbis, #179, 2017
Sleeves Rolled Up, Highly Commended, Annual Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards, 2017, Commended, Francis Ledwidge Awards, 2017
An Avenue Cuts, Poetry Ireland Review, Issue 124/5, 2018
Fluke, Humanagerie Anthology, 2018
Cloncon Garden and the Tree of Knowledge, Winning Poem at Words by Water, Kinsale Festival, 2018 (Judge: Niall McMonagle)
Fate, Cyphers, 2018
Waiting with a View of the Lane, Commendation, The Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Awards, 2018
Birds of the Air, Allegro Poetry Magazine, March 2019
Façades, Jewish Literary Journal, January, 2019
Crossing Themes, Crossways Magazine, 2019
On the Fly, Orbis, #186, 2019
Poetry Collections
A Collection, Nor Have We Wings, shortisted for The May Swenson Award, 2002, Utah State University
A Collection, Untitled, shortlisted for The Tipperary Chap-Book Award,
2007
A Collection, No Room at Home, shortisted for Listowel Poetry
Collection Competition 2009.
A Collection, Back to the World, shortlisted for Listowel Poetry
Collection Competition, 2013
A Collection for Patrick Kavanagh Award 2014, Highly
Commended.
Broken Circle, a Collection, accepted by Salmon Press.
A Collection, Second Prize, Patrick Kavanagh Poetry award, 2018
Prose Published
Short Fiction: published in The London Magazine, Bridport Anthology, Columbia Magazine of Prose and Poetry, The Tribune, Tipperary Arts Festival Chapbook Series, etc.
Securex, The Bridport Anthology, Samson and Company, 2000; and in Signals-3, London Magazine Stories Selected by Alan Ross and Jane Rye, 2001
Mssrs Trimble and Cluestar, Columbia Magazine of Poetry and Prose, The Lost Issues, 1993
The Sign of the Dog, Columbia Magazine of Poetry and Prose, Number 9, 1984
The Wrong Address, adapted for Radio, Radio Telefís Éireann, 2001
Normality, The Tribune (shortlisted for Hennessy Award), 1992
The Mystery of it All, The Tribune (Short-List for Hennessy Award), 1994
Treadmill, Tipperary Arts Festival Winners Chapbook, First Prize, 2006
Daniel and Brad and Wheeze Momma, Ibid.
Boring for England, shortlisted for Best Story, Listowel Writers Week, 2008
Grey and Brown Unrelieved, shortlisted for Molly Keane Creative Writing Award, 2008
Letter to Meryl, Orbis, 2014
Playing Through, Leapfrog Press, Spring 2015
Soul Crows, a Memoir, Longlisted for Stinging Fly Memoir Competition, 2016
Bedrock, The Honest Ulsterman, 2016
Letter to Meryl – the Sequel, Orbis, #179, 2017
Daily Bread, Second Prize in Words by Water, Kinsale Literary Festival, 2017 and Commended by Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards, 2017.
Storyline, Fictive Dream … 2018
Quietude, Story Magazine … 2018
Trending, a Play, Scrittura Magazine, 2018
Dough, Peacock Journal, 2018
Letter From the Curia, shortlisted and Highly Commended in the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards, 2018
Letter to Meryl: Final Sequel, Orbis, #186, 2019
Books
Come Home, Robbie, Published by O’brien Press, 1990
Ireland’s Malaise, Published by The Liffey Press, Oct, 2010
Treadmill, A Chapbook of Short-Stories, 2008
The Visit, Anaphora Press, 2017
Smudged Mascara, Azimuth Publishing 2019
Maura’s Dance with Uncle Sam, Azimuth Publishing 2019
The Killing of Ros Grenham, Azimuth Publishing 2019
Plays
Wedding Speech, performed by Radió Telefís Éireann, 2003
Tabu, First Prize At Listowel Writers’ Week, 2007, performed as Joyce’s Wake in Mill Theatre, Dundrum, 2014
The High Priest of Hackballscross, performed in Mill Theatre, Dundrum, 2014
Joyce’s Wake, performed in Mill Theatre and Players’ Theatre Trinity College, 2015
Bit Parts, rehearsed reading at Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, 2012
Contrast, rehearsed reading at Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, 2013
Cupidity, performed, National Gallery of Ireland, 2014
Dimples and Sin, performed, National Gallery of Ireland, 2014
Get Down with the Groove, performed Players’ Theatre, Trinity College
Transatlantic Therapy, performed in Players’ Theatre, Trinity College
Wait Now, rehearsed reading in Mill Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, 2017
Essays
Hundreds of articles, essays and book reviews in The Irish Times, Sunday Times, Business and Finance, Dublin Review of Books, etc.