John Banville is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and book reviewer. A journalist for many years, he was Irish Times literary editor from 1988 to 2000. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and other periodicals.

His novels include The Book of Evidence, The Sea and, most recently, The Singularities. He has been awarded the Man Booker Prize, the Austrian State Prize for Literature, the Kafka Prize, the Irish PEN Award and the Prince of Asturias Award. He is the author of several crime novels, including Snow and, most recently, The Lock-Up. He was born in Wexford and lives in Dublin.