The novelist, short-story writer and scriptwriter Bernard Mac Laverty was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and educated at St Malachy’s grammar school. He worked as a medical laboratory technician (1960-70) before reading English at Queen’s University, Belfast as a mature student. In the late 1960s he joined the Belfast writers’ group founded by university lecturer Philip Hobsbaum, a group which fostered the talents of Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon. He graduated from Queen’s in 1974 and moved to Edinburgh the following year to take up a teaching post in a comprehensive school. He then lived and taught on the Isle of Islay until the success of his debut novel,

Lamb

(1980), enabled him to become a full-time writer in 1981. Since then he has published three…

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Citation: Harte, Liam. "Bernard MacLaverty". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 March 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2862, accessed 28 March 2024.]

2862 Bernard MacLaverty 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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