Boylan, Roger 1951-

views updated

BOYLAN, Roger 1951-

PERSONAL: Born July 20, 1951, in Florida; son of E. B. (an electronics engineer and peripatetic electronic-bell installer) and E. R. (a journalist and editor) Boylan; married Elizabeth Makowski, October 19, 1990; children: Margaret Mary. Education: Attended University of Ulster, 1971-72; University of Edinburgh, B.A., 1976. Politics: "Progressive Conservative." Religion: "Doubt; if I had one, I'd be Roman Catholic." Hobbies and other interests: History, music, painting, literature.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Grove Press, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: National Institute of Languages, New York, NY, instructor in English and French, 1986-91; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY, technical writer, 1991-93; Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, director of English as a second language, 1993-95; Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc. (publisher), Austin, TX, editor of high school textbooks, 1995-2002; Harcourt Assessment (publisher), San Antonio, TX, senior editor, 2003—.

WRITINGS:

Killoyle, an Irish Farce (novel), Dalkey Archive Press (McLean, IL), 1997.

The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad (novel), Grove Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor of short stories, articles, and book reviews to periodicals, including Scrivener, Recorder, Austin American-Statesman, Boston Review, Texas Observer, and Literary Review.

Boylan's novels have been translated into German.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Killoyle Wine and Cheese, third part of Killoyle trilogy; Gustave Adored, a novel of twentieth-century Europe; a memoir.

SIDELIGHTS: Roger Boylan once told CA: "I write in order to make sense of life and in order to amuse myself and others. I am influenced primarily by Irish satirists such as Swift, Sterne, Beckett, Flann O'Brien, and Joyce; also by Hayek, Nabokov, Kafka, of the central and eastern Europeans; and by such unavoidable universal giants such as Flaubert, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Twain.

"I write on a computer at home. I have chosen to write on subjects Irish, for a familiar context, and subjects universal, such as love, ambition, death, et cetera, so my work will endure, or at least have a meaning for others."