Trinity announced on their website that Mark O’Connell, author of To Be a Machine, has been appointed as Rooney Writer Fellow, on October 2nd.
The Rooney Writer Fellowship, established in 2021, is an initiative that allows a writer to participate in the Trinity Long Room Hub research programs in the arts and humanities, an opportunity which O’Connell feels will “spark off all kinds of inspiration” in his own work.
This announcement comes after a long string of successes in O’Connell’s career. His debut book To Be a Machine won him the Wellcome Book Prize in 2018, as well as the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2019, with the latter marking the first time the award was given to a work of nonfiction.
His works explore the increasingly dystopian state of the world, with themes ranging from transhumanism in To Be a Machine, to doomsday preppers in Notes from an Apocalypse and have been acknowledged for his refreshingly original ideas and witty style of writing.
His latest book, A Thread of Violence, marks a departure from the topic of techno-futurism, detailing instead the grizzly details of the Malcolm Macarthur murders in the eighties. One enthusiastic reviewer from The Guardian described it as a “masterpiece of murkiness”
On top of his books, O’Connell is also known for his journalism. He is a columnist for The Irish Times and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Guardian.
The writer completed his undergraduate degree in English at Trinity, as well as his PhD in 2011.
