Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney was born in 1991 in Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland. She studied English at Trinity College Dublin, where she was president of the College Historical Society and a competitive debater. Her debut novel Conversations with Friends (2017) announced her as a major new literary voice. Her second novel Normal People (2018) became a global phenomenon, winning the Waterstones Book of the Year and the Costa Novel Award, and was adapted into a widely praised BBC/Hulu television series in 2020. The novel follows two young people from the west of Ireland through university and early adulthood, examining class, intimacy, and emotional vulnerability with spare, precise prose. Her third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) was also a bestseller and longlisted for the Booker Prize. Intermezzo (2024) marked another major success. Rooney is one of the defining novelists of her generation, often described as giving voice to the anxieties and aspirations of millennials. She lives in Dublin and has been a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights, having refused to allow her novels to be published in Hebrew by an Israeli publisher.