Karen Gillece was born in Dublin in 1974. She studied Law at University College Dublin and worked for several years in the telecommunications industry before turning to writing full-time. Her first novel Seven Nights In Zaragoza was published in 2005 to critical acclaim, and was followed by Longshore Drift in 2006. Upon the publication of her last novel My Glass Heart the critics hailed her as the queen of emerging Irish fiction. She was shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award in 2001 and her short stories have been widely published in literary journals and magazines. Her latest novel, The Absent Wife, was published in April 2008.
Karen Gillece is the Irish winner of this year’s European Prize for Literature. Karen was chosen from a shortlist of six on the basis of her four novels The Absent Wife, My Glass Heart, Longshore Drift and Seven Nights in Zaragoza. The EU-funded prize of €5,000 is given to emerging authors from around a dozen European countries each year.