Edna O'Brien has written more than twenty works of fiction, most recently The Little Red Chairs, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and garnered extraordinary reviews worldwide. Her plays include A Pagan Place (Royal Court, London), Virginia (on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf, Haymarket, London), Iphigenia (Crucible, Sheffield),Our Father (Almeida, London), Family Butchers (Magic Theatre, San Francisco), Triptych (Southwark Playhouse, London) and Haunted (Royal Exchange, Manchester). She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Arts Gold Medal, and the Ulysses medal, as well as the Frank O'Connor Prize. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she has lived in London for many years, and was recently appointed a Dame of the British Empire for her services to literature.