{"id":219909,"date":"2025-12-31T13:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T13:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/219909\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T13:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T13:18:07","slug":"sean-mac-mathuna-award-winning-writer-in-irish-and-english-dies-aged-89-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/219909\/","title":{"rendered":"Se\u00e1n Mac Math\u00fana, award-winning writer in Irish and English, dies aged 89 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The death has occurred in Dublin of the writer Se\u00e1n Mac Math\u00fana, aged 89.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A native of Co Kerry, he was among a small number of writers who won awards and recognition for works in both Irish and English.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">His 1987 collection of short stories, The Atheist, was Ireland\u2019s nomination for the European Literature Prize. He had two original collections in Irish, Ding (1983) and Banana (1999), which won the Gradam U\u00ed Sh\u00failleabh\u00e1in award.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A selection of his stories in Irish  is reprinted in \u00dalla (2007).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">His play The Winter Thief, a tragedy set in Kerry  during the War of Independence, won the Bank of Ireland Award at Listowel Writers\u2019 Week literary festival and had a successful run in the Abbey Theatre in 1991, with the same cast \u2013 Don Wycherley, Aisling O\u2019Sullivan, Bosco Hogan, Macdara \u00d3 Fatharta, Peadar Lamb and Mick Lally \u2013 performing a prize-winning Irish-language version, Gada\u00ed G\u00e9ar na Geamho\u00edche, on alternating nights. Following this he became   a judge on behalf of The Irish Times  for the Irish Literature Prize.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mac Math\u00fana was also the author of a bestselling historical novel, Hula Hul  (2007), a love story set in Kerry during the Civil War.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He his survived by his sons Mel and Fiach and daughter Sadhbh. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death has occurred in Dublin of the writer Se\u00e1n Mac Math\u00fana, aged 89. A native of Co&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15338,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-219909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-gaeilge","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}