Michael Collins (Irish author)

Michael Collins (born 4 June 1964) is an Irish novelist and international ultra-distance runner. His novel The Keepers of Truth was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize.^[1] He has also won the Kerry Ingredients Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Lucien Barriere Literary Prize at the Deauville American Film Festival.^[2][3]

Michael Collins at Toronto's Ireland Park Famine Memorial

Early life and education

Collins was born in Limerick.^[4] He earned an athletic scholarship to University of Notre Dame and received a master's degree from Oxford University.^[4] He has a doctorate from the University of Illinois Chicago.^[4]

Athletics

A former member of the Irish National Team for the 100k distance (62.2 miles),^[5] Collins holds the Irish national masters record over the 100k distance.^{[citation needed]} As captain of the Irish National Team in 2010,^[6] he won a bronze medal at the World 100k Championships held in Gibraltar.^{[citation needed]} He has also won The 100-mile Himalayan Stage Race and The Mount Everest Challenge Marathon, along with The Last Marathon in Antarctica, and The North Pole Marathon.^[7]

Works

• The Meat Eaters (short stories, also published as The Man who Dreamt of Lobsters), 1992
• The Life and Times of a Teaboy, 1993^[8]
• The Feminists Go Swimming, 1994, ISBN 9781897580080^[9]
• Emerald Underground, 1998^[10]
• The Keepers of Truth, 2000^[11]
• The Resurrectionists, 2003
• Lost Souls, 2004
• Death of a Writer (British title: The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton), 2006
• Midnight in a Perfect Life (British title), 2010
• The New Existence (British title: The Death of all Things Seen), 2016