Born in Dublin, Ireland, on 21 April 1948, to Patrick and Evelyn Boylan (née Selby),[1][2] Boylan began her career as a journalist at the now defunct Irish Press.[1][3] In 1974, she won the Journalist of the Year award when working in the city for the Evening Press.[2][3]There she met her husband, fellow journalist Alan Wilkes.[2] From 1981, Boylan edited the glossy magazine Image,[3] before largely giving up journalism to focus on a career as an author in 1984.[1][2]
Her novels are Holy Pictures (1983),[4] Last Resorts (1984), Black Baby (1988),[5] Home Rule (1992), Beloved Stranger (1999), Room for a Single Lady (1997) – which won the Spirit of Light Award[2] and was optioned for a film – and Emma Brown (2003).[6][7] The latter work is a continuation of a 20-page fragment written by Charlotte Brontë before her death.[1][6][8]
Boylan's short stories are collected in A Nail on the Head (1983), Concerning Virgins (1990) and That Bad Woman (1995).[7] The film Making Waves, based on her short story "Some Ladies on a Tour", was nominated for an Oscar in 1988.
Her non-fiction includes The Agony and the Ego (1994) and The Literary Companion to Cats (1994).[6][7] She wrote introductions to the novels of Kate O'Brien and Molly Keane and adapted Molly Keane's novel Good Behaviour as the classic serial for BBC Radio 4 (2004).[6][7] Boylan's work has been translated as far afield as Russia and Hong Kong.[7]
Many of her writings were inspired by feminist thinking.[1][2][3] She said of this theme that "by definition, I am a woman writer because the things that interest me are the things that are most interesting to women".[3] Her works gained her membership to Aosdána.[2][6][7]
In later life, she lived in County Wicklow[2][7] with her husband Alan Wilkes.[1][6] She died in Dublin after a lengthy struggle with ovarian cancer, aged 58, on 16 May 2006.[1][6]
