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Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

Irish writer and Creative Writing teacher (born 1954)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ8078168 ↗
Source-derived summary

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne (pronounced [ˈeːlʲiːʃ n̠ʲiː ˈɣɪvʲnʲə]; born 22 February 1954), also known as Eilis Almquist and Elizabeth O'Hara, is an Irish novelist and short story writer who writes both in Irish and English. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and is a recipient of the Irish PEN Award.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was appointed Laureate for Irish Fiction in 2025.

Biography

Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954. She attended University College Dublin (UCD), where she studied Pure English for her BA, did an M Phil in Middle English and Old Irish, and finished in 1982 with a PhD in Folklore She was awarded the UCD Entrance scholarship for English, and two post-graduate scholarships in Folklore. In 1978-9 she studied at the Folklore Institute in the University of Copenhagen while researching her doctoral thesis, and in 1982 was awarded a PhD from the National University of Ireland (NUI). About her time in Denmark, Ní Dhuibhne states that she "kind of discovered feminism there", because it "was more liberal and advanced politically and in terms of feminism". She has worked in the Department of Irish Folklore in UCD, and for many years as a curator in the National Library of Ireland. Also a teacher of Creative Writing, she has been Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and is currently Writer Fellow at UCD. She is a member of Aosdána since 2004, an ambassador for the Irish Writers' Centre, and President of the Folklore of Ireland Society (An Cumann le Béaloideas Éireann). Ní Dhuibhne is the Burns Visiting Scholar at Boston College for the fall 2020 semester.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Éilís Ní Dhuibhne” is irish writer and Creative Writing teacher (born 1954). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Éilís, Dhuibhne and Irish, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1954, 2025, 1982, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1954-02-22. For this dossier, Éilís, Dhuibhne and Irish is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “irish writer and Creative Writing teacher (born 1954)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8078168. VIAF identifies the subject as 119967723. The Library of Congress control number is nr88008209. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 2025, 1982 and 1978.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Éilís Ní Dhuibhne”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Éilís Ní Dhuibhne primary sources, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne archive and Éilís research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Éilís Ní Dhuibhne”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Éilís Ní Dhuibhne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.