Darcy O'Brien (1939-1998) was born in Los Angeles, the son of the movie stars George O'Brien and Marguerite Churchill. He attended Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley, and taught at the University of Tulsa. O'Brien's first novel,
A Way of Life, Like Any Other, won the PEN/Hemingway award. His books include the novels
The Silver Spooner and
Margaret in Hollywood, critical studies of James Joyce and Patrick Kavanagh, and several other works of nonfiction, among them
Two of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers and
The Hidden Pope.
Seamus Heaney's first poetry collection,
Death of a Naturalist, appeared forty years ago. Since then he has published poetry, criticism, and translations that have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.