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Desmond Hogan (born 10 December 1950) is an Irish writer.

Hogan was born in Ballinasloe in east County Galway, Ireland. His father was a draper. Educated locally at St. Grellan’s Boys’ National School and St. Josephs’s College, Garbally Park. Some of his earliest work was published in The Fountain, the Garbally college annual.

After leaving school, Hogan travelled to France, ending up in Paris just after the student riots of 1968 . He later studied at University College Dublin, where he received a BA in 1972 and an MA in 1973.

In 1971 he won the Hennessy Award. The Irish Writers' Co-operative, formed by writer Fred Johnston, Neil Jordan and playwright Peter Sheridan at a meeting in a Dublin restaurant, were to publish Hogan's 'The Ikon Maker', which was also the Co-op's first publication. While in Dublin, he worked as a street actor and had a number of plays - A Short Walk to the Sea, Sanctified Distances, and The Squat - produced in the Abbey Theatre and the Project Arts Centre. RTÉ and BBC Radio broadcast some of his plays, including Jimmy. He also published stories in small magazines like Adam and the Transatlantic Review.

Later he moved to London, living in Tooting, Catford and Hounslow and then later as a lodger in the Hampstead home of Anthony Farrell, a young Irish publisher. Friends and acquaintances from this period included: writer Jaci Stephen, biographer Patrick Newley, Kazuo Ishiguro and his partner, Lorna. Hogan also participated in poetry and literature readings held at Bernard Stone's Turrett Bookshop on Floral Street in Covent Garden.

His debut novel, The Ikon-Makers, was written in 1974 and published in 1976.

In 1977, he was the recipient of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. In 1978, he participated in the Santa Cruz Writers Conference. In the early 1980s, Hogan was represented by the Deborah Rogers agency, which also had Peter Carey, Bruce Chatwin, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie on its books. In 1980, he won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for his Diamonds at the Bottom of the Sea collection of short stories. In 1981, he appeared in Granta.

In 1989, Hogan left London and was a Hudson Strode Fellow at the University of Alabama. In 1991, Hogan was awarded a place on the DAAD (German Academic Exchange) Berlin Artists' Programme fellowship which enabled him to live in that city.

Hogan returned to Ireland in 1995, living in Clifden, Co. Galway. For a period, he lived in an old caravan in Co. Limerick along North Kerry/West Limerick border. In 1997, he lectured in short fiction at the University of California, San Diego.

He was a judge in the 2005 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize worth ?50,000.

Hogan features in a number of major anthologies of modern Irish literature. Colm Tóibín has identified 'Winter Swimmers' as one of his finest stories. According to Robert McCrum, former Literary Editor of The Observer, Hogan is one of "one of Ireland's finest writers". Fellow Irish author, Colum McCann, claims that Hogan, along with Benedict Kiely, is one of two Irish writers who have influenced him greatly .

In July 2008, Hogan admitted a charge of aggravated sexual assault against a 15 year old boy in Hogan's home in Ballybunion. In Oct 2009, Hogan was given a two year suspended jail sentence, placed on the sex offenders register and ordered not to have unsupervised contact with children under 18.

He currently lives in Dublin.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Desmond Hogan", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0