Elizabeth O'Connor

O'Connor is from Birmingham. Her Irish grandfather was from the Dingle Peninsula,^[1] while her Welsh grandmother was from a fishing village in North Wales; both moved to English cities during World War II.^[2]

O'Connor graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in English literature from Durham University in 2012 and a Master of Arts (MA) in Shakespeare studies from King's College London in 2013.^[1] She completed a PhD in 2019 at the University of Birmingham on the nature writing of H.D..^[3]

O'Connor's short story "Woman with a White Pekingese" won the 2020 White Review Short Story Prize.^[4]

Via a 10-way auction in October 2022, Picador Books (an Pan Macmillan imprint) acquired the rights to publish O'Connor's debut novel Whale Fall in 2024.^[5][6] The novel takes place in 1938 on a fictional small island off the coast of Wales and features 18-year-old Manod Llan seeking to leave as two English anthropologists Joan and Edward visiting the island hire her as a translator.^[7] O'Connor had wanted to write about depopulated islands, reading memoirs of evacuees from Bardsey Island, St Kilda, the Blaskets and the Aran Islands.^[8] Whale Fall won the Chautauqua Prize and a Betty Trask Award. It also made the ALA Notable Books list,^[9] and was a BBC Two Between the Covers book club pick,^[10] shortlisted for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. O'Connor was named one of the 10 best new novelists of 2024 by The Observer.^[1]

O'Connor is using her Chautauqua Prize to write her second novel.^[11]

Novels

• Whale Fall (2024)

Short stories

• "Woman with a White Pekingese" (2019)
• "Gororau (Borderlands)" (2021) in Granta