Born in Wexford, Ireland, John Banville is a prolific novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and former literary editor for The Irish Times. Banville published his first collection of short fiction, Long Larkin, in 1970, and his first novel Nightspawn came out the following year. His Doctor Copernicus (1976), the opening volume of the Revolutions trilogy, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1976 and was followed by Kepler (1981) and The Newton Letter ( 1982) - all fictional biographies based on the lives of noted scientists. Banville's novel The Sea (2005), which follows a widowed art historian visiting a childhood holiday destination, went on to win the Booker Prize 2005, and in 2011 Banville was awarded the prestigious international Franz Kafka Prize. Banville is also the author of bestselling crime fiction, some of it published under the penname of Benjamin Black, including his popular Quirke series that features a 1950s pathologist based in Dublin. In 2016, Banville published a memoir titled Time Pieces , and his more recent novels include the bestselling Mrs Osmond (2017) and The Singularities (2022).