25 Facts About Frank McGuinness

Professor Frank McGuinness was born on 1953 and is an Irish writer.

Frank McGuinness has published six collections of poetry, and two novels.

Frank McGuinness was born in Buncrana, a town located on the Inishowen Peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland.

Frank McGuinness was educated locally and at University College Dublin, where he studied Pure English and medieval studies to postgraduate level.

Frank McGuinness has written new versions of classic dramas, including works by Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and Euripides, adapting the literal translations of others.

Frank McGuinness explained that he was inspired by "the women in my family".

Frank McGuinness was inspired by "this innocent sheep" who, at the end of the story, will be sacrificed instead of the child.

Frank McGuinness has declared that he had "wanted to construct a five-act Shakespearean play", and to use "narrative in a way that I hope no one had done before".

Frank McGuinness has described the play as "a big brute", adding that, among his works to date, "I suspect 'this play will last'".

Frank McGuinness, who is himself gay and whose plays often contain gay relationships or explore more traditional family drama from an outsider's perspective, has explained that he "wanted to write a play that was a great celebration of homosexual marriage, love, partnership".

Gates of Gold looks at the dying days of MacLiammoir, because Frank McGuinness wanted to write "something darker and stranger", and less predictable, about these two pioneers of theatre.

Frank McGuinness is as well known for his play adaptations as for his original plays.

Frank McGuinness has adapted classics by Sophocles, Jean Racine, Henrik Ibsen, Moliere, Valle-Inclan, Federico Garcia Lorca, as well as short works by Strindberg and Pirandello, a short story by James Joyce, and novels by Stoker and Du Maurier.

Frank McGuinness didn't know what he was unleashing but that was the beginning really.

Frank McGuinness wrote the book as research for his play The Hanging Gardens, but never thought it would be published as a novel.

The story of the play deals with a novelist who contracts Alzheimer's disease, and progressively loses control of his mind; in order to understand the character better, Frank McGuinness decided to try to write a novel that that man could have written, and the result was Arimathea.

Fogarty said that Frank McGuinness' novel has "liberated" the Joyce family from historiographers and biographers, and described the book as "wise and witty".

At the launch, Frank McGuinness explained that he fell under the spell of Joyce as a young man, when he heard Joni Mitchel read out the opening one and a half pages from the novel 'Portrait of the Artist'.

Frank McGuinness said that he was aware, in taking on the project of a novel about the Joyces, that he was "putting my head into a zoo-worth of lions' mouths", but that this would not stop him.

In 2018, Frank McGuinness published his first collection of short fiction, Paprika, consisting of twelve stories.

Frank McGuinness was invited to write the libretto by composer Julian Anderson.

Frank McGuinness was the author of the original script for "Talk of Angels", the cinema adaptation of Kate O'Brien's banned novel Mary Lavelle, although the script was considerably modified in the final production.

Frank McGuinness was the scriptwriter for the ground-breaking television film "A Short Stay in Switzerland", dealing with euthanasia.

Major recurring features of Frank McGuinness's playwriting include the treatment of historical events and the prominent inclusion of gay or bisexual characters.

Frank McGuinness has been in a relationship with his partner, Philip, since 1979.