Dermot Bolger

Dermot Bolger
Born1959 (age 66–67)
Finglas, Ireland
Occupations
  • Novelist
  • playwright
  • poet
  • editor
RelativesJune Considine (sister)
Websitedermotbolger.com

Dermot Bolger (born 1959) is an Irish novelist, playwright, poet and editor from Dublin, Ireland.

Bolger is the author of fourteen novels, including The Journey Home, The Family on Paradise Pier, The Lonely Sea and Sky and An Ark of Light. His latest novel, Hide Away, was published in 2024.

He is a member of the artist's association Aosdána.

Early life

Bolger was born in the Finglas suburb of Dublin in 1959. His older sister is the writer June Considine.

As an eighteen-year-old factory worker in 1977, Bolger set up Raven Arts Press, which published early books by writers like Patrick McCabe, Colm Toibin, Sara Berkeley, Fintan O’Toole, Eoin McNamee, Kathryn Holmquist, Michael O'Loughlin, Sebastian Barry and Rosita Boland as well as the first English language translations of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill before its closing in 1993. A partial archive of the press at the University of Delaware calls Raven Arts "one of the most important publishers of literature in Ireland during the last part of the twentieth century."

Career

Bolger's early work is set in the working-class Dublin suburb of Finglas and in the nearby high-rise Ballymun tower blocks.

Two novels, The Family on Paradise Pier and An Ark of Light, chronicle the fate of a real Anglo-Irish family, The Goold-Verschoyles, some of whom embrace Communism in the 1930s with tragic consequences. While the first novel chronicles the fate of the family until 1948, the second novel focuses on the daughter, who defies convention in 1950s Ireland by leaving a failed marriage to embark on a journey of self-discovery from teeming Moroccan streets to a caravan that becomes an ark for all those whom she befriends amid the fields of Mayo. An Ark of Light explores a mother's anxiety for her gay son in a world where homosexuality was still illegal.

Bolger's novel, The Lonely Sea and Sky, uses the real-life story of a wartime sea rescue, by the unarmed crew of a tiny Wexford ship, The M.V. Kerlogue, of German sailors from the Navy who had previously tried to sink them. His novel, Tanglewood, which explores the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, was described by Colum McCann in the Irish Independent as "a superb novel about the implosion not only of the economy in the mid-2000s, but the implosion of marriage and morality and memory too."

Bolger adapted James Joyce's novel, Ulysses, for the stage. It was first staged by the Tron Theatre in Glasgow in 2012, who toured it to China in 2014. In 2017 it was staged by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, who revived their production for a second run in 2018.

In May 2022, Bolger received an honorary doctorate in literature from the National University of Ireland, in a ceremony at the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin. At the ceremony, a similar honorary doctorate was conferred on Marie Heaney.

As Publisher

In 1988, Bolger published Paddy Doyle's memoir, The God Squad (1988), which is described in The Cambridge History of Irish Literature (page 468) as "an exposé of the institutional regime to which outcast children were subjected by religious caregivers."

Raven Arts Press followed this up with another exposé, this time about Irish Industrial Schools in Patrick Galvin's memoir Song for a Raggy Boy (1991). The book was made into a 2003 film of the same name, directed by Aisling Walsh. The film, according to The Cambridge History of Irish Literature (page 553) "focuses on how a lay teacher responds to the verbal and physical abuse doled out by the Christian Brothers in a reformatory school."

Bolger ran Raven Arts Press until 1992, when he co-founded New Island Books with Edwin Higel to continue to support new Irish writers.

Since 1989, Bolger has acted as associate editor of the "New Irish Writing" page, which has been edited by Ciaran Carty in a succession of Irish newspapers since 1989, continuing a tradition started by David Marcus in 1969 in the now-defunct The Irish Press. The page is currently hosted by the Irish Independent.

Writing

Novels

Short Story Collections

Plays

Poetry

Research work

References

  1. ↑ "About the Author: Dermot Bolger". The Arts Council. Archived from the original on 6 January 2026. Retrieved 26 December 2025.
  2. ↑ "Poetry Reviews - Inquisition Lane, by Matthew Sweeney; That Which is Suddenly Precious, by Dermot Bolger". irishtimes.com. Irish Times. 28 November 2015. Archived from the original on 27 November 2024. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
  3. ↑ "Writer's directory - Dermot Bolger". poetryireland.ie. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
  4. ↑ "Collection: Raven Arts Press archive | Finding Aids for Archival Collections". findingaids.lib.udel.edu. Archived from the original on 7 August 2024. Retrieved 27 December 2025.
  5. ↑ "Bye bye, Bang Bang: a great Dublin eccentric gets his due". irishtimes.com. Irish Times. 28 August 2017. Archived from the original on 12 June 2022. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Bolger, Dermot". New Island Books website. Archived from the original on 17 February 2010.
  7. ↑ "Other People's Lives - Dermot Bolger on his new poetry collection". rte.ie. RTÉ. 6 May 2022. Archived from the original on 12 June 2022. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
  8. ↑ "Système universitaire de documentation". Archived from the original on 26 November 2025. Retrieved 26 November 2025.[not specific enough to verify]