Clare Boylan: Clare Boylan, who has died aged 58, was an award-winning journalist and critically acclaimed author. She worked as a journalist and critic for a range of magazines, international broadcast media and newspapers, most notably the Evening Press and Image magazine.
In 1974, she was recognised as Ireland's journalist of the year, before writing her first novel, Holy Pictures, published in 1983.
Over the course of a writing career spanning two decades, she wrote short stories, non fiction and fictional works, many of which were translated.
The realisation that fiction could be real, and that truth need not be dull, inspired her to become a writer. "Fiction relates; fact to feeling, truth to imagination, so that readers may (one hopes) make sense of their own lives and develop sympathy for others." Born in Dublin in 1948, one of the three daughters of Patrick and Evelyn Boylan, she grew up in Terenure; went to Presentation Convent, then to St Louis's in Rathmines, and did her Leaving Certificate at Rathmines Senior College. She always wanted to write and had her first story published in the Pioneer when she was 14.
Her first job was selling paperbacks in Eason's, but she was writing articles and doing work for RTÉ at the same time. Then she went to the Irish Press library, but by 19 had become editor of Young Woman magazine. From there she went to Woman's Choice, then back for six years as a feature writer with the Evening Press. In 1980 she became editor of Image, her last full-time job in journalism before devoting herself to creative writing. After Cosmopolitan published one of her stories, she got herself an agent in Britain. This was a major step forward in her literary career.
"For example," she said, "I had written and had published about 15 short stories and my agent said, 'there's no point in trying to get these published as a book. You will have to write a novel first and then you'll be taken seriously'." So she left her job in the Press and took about 18 months off writing in the seclusion of her house outside Bray.
She had routine and discipline. In the morning she got a pot of coffee and went into the study and stayed there, more or less, for the full duration of a working day.
This, she said, was very important. "Write, even if it doesn't seem good or even what you're looking for at the time. Just write. It often comes in useful later on when you're going well but a paragraph or even a phrase is eluding you . . . and [ then] you go tearing through your notes and there it is and it fits perfectly."
Following the publication of Holy Pictures she found herself in revered company among the most widely reviewed and widely praised of first novelists. However, her second novel Last Resorts (1984) was received less rapturously, but she took the criticism in her stride and later novels were highly praised.
Her nose for good modern literature was undisputed. A particularly successful editor of Image, she was able with ease and confidence to call on many famous names to write for her, and her contributors included Margaret Drabble, Beryl Bainbridge and Michael Holroyd.
Her work was translated in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. When Holy Pictures was being translated, she recalled, a very conscientious gentleman spent an hour on the phone from Sweden checking certain phrases: "Can you explain please, and, if possible, in the urban context, what is [ the] meaning of 'a rub of the relic'?" Her other novels are Black Baby (1988), Home Rule (1992) and Beloved Stranger (1999). Room for a Single Lady (1997) won the Spirit of Light Award and was optioned for a film. Her short stories are collected in A Nail on the Head (1983), Concerning Virgins (1990) and That Bad Woman (1995).
Her non-fiction includes The Agony and the Ego: Essays on the art and strategy of fiction writing (1994) and The Literary Companion to Cats (1994).
In 1988 the film Making Waves, which was based on her short story, Some Ladies on a Tour, was nominated for an Oscar in the best short film category. In 2004 BBC Radio 4 broadcast her adaptation of Molly Keane's novel Good Behaviour. Her most recent novel, Emma Brown (2005), is a continuation of an 18-page fragment written by Charlotte Brontë.
Her husband, Alan Wilkes, and sisters, Anne and Patricia, survive her.
Clare Boylan: born April 21st, 1948; died May 16th, 2006