IN SOMETHING of a literary coup, one of the United States' most acclaimed contemporary authors, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer Richard Ford, has been appointed as adjunct professor in the School of English in Trinity College, Dublin.
The school is based in the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, where Mr Ford will teach students of the MPhil in creative writing. The American writer will be in residence in the college a number of times during the year.
He has been conducting masterclasses on fiction with this year's students and launched their anthology Sixteen After Ten in the college last night. He will return to the Oscar Wilde Centre in the autumn and his arrangement with Trinity is due to continue for three years, during which he will also give a number of public readings.
Ford's best-known works include The Sportswriter, which established his reputation in 1986, and its sequel, Independence Day, proclaimed by some critics as a modern masterpiece and which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner award.
His latest novel in the cycle featuring the life of his American everyman Frank Bascombe, The Lay of the Land, was published to much acclaim in 2006.
His others books include: Women with Men, Rock Springs, Wildlife and A Piece of My Heart.
Ford, who was born in Mississippi, has edited several short story anthologies, including last year's New Granta Book of the American Short Story.
Welcoming the appointment, the head of the School of English, Dr Stephen Matterson, said the college was delighted to be associated with such a major figure in contemporary literature. "Richard Ford is a perfect fit with the school and college's international profile and with our longstanding commitment to the development of critical and creative writing," he said.
The Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, which is housed in the original Wilde family home at 21 Westland Row, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month.
It was set up as the teaching and research centre for both the long-standing MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature and the then newly established pioneering MPhil in creative writing, the first of its kind to be offered by an Irish university at the time.