John Maher

John Maher is an author, traveller, dad, grandad, former teacher and lecturer. He writes literary novels, thrillers and non-fiction. He lives in a small town in 'south central Ireland' . Among the prizes he has won are the Francis McManus short story award (R.T.E, Radio) and the P.J. O'Connor Radio Play award (R.T.E, Radio).He was awarded the Marianne Pallotti fellowship to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, California . His literary novel The Luck Penny was shortlisted for debut novel , on Simon Mayo's Radio Five Live. He is a fellow of the McDowell Colony, New Hampshire. His stories have been broadcast on R.T.E. and B.B.C.

A former teacher and lecturer in Near Eastern Languages at University College Dublin and guest lecturer/visiting research fellow in King's College London, his doctoral thesis, Slouching Towards Jerusalem: Reactive Nationalism in the Irish, Israeli and Palestinian Novel, 1985-2005 (SOAS University of London) was published in Autumn 2011. His novel, A Short History of Darkness (2014), is set between a small Irish village and a Druze village in the Western Galilee. When the Sun Bursts, centres around a mother kidnapping her own child against the background of the 1916 Rising in Dublin. His thriller, The Collector, is set in contemporary Ireland and is the first in the Lucy O'Hara (detective/forensic linguist) series.

He is currently working on a new Lucy O'Hara novel - Bill Frostie Must Die - and editing a travelogue/memoir based on a recent trip around the borders of Turkey.