Liz Nugent is an Irish novelist, born in Dublin in 1967.
Early life
Liz Nugent attended Holy Child Killiney, in County Dublin. At the age of six she suffered a brain injury which left her with dystonia. After leaving school she moved to London for a time. After her return to Ireland she enrolled in an acting course at the Gaiety Theatre, but soon switched to stage management. She toured the world with Riverdance in a stage management role and later worked in an administrative role for RTÉ on the soap Fair City. During her time at RTÉ she was commissioned to write a five-part animation series for TG4 and also wrote a full-length radio play. She subsequently won a European Broadcasting Union competition for a TV pilot.
Writing career
Her first novel began life as a short story called Alice which made the shortlist of the RTÉ Francis McManus Short Story Competition in 2006. Further exploration into the main character produced her first best-selling novel Unravelling Oliver which won the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award at the Bord Gáis Irish Book Awards in 2014. It was published by Scout Press in the US in August 2017. This debut novel was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award 2016. Her second novel Lying In Wait won the Ryan Tubridy Listeners' Choice Award at the Irish Book Awards in 2016 and was published in the US in June 2018. It was also longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award in 2018. Her third novel Skin Deep was published in April 2018. This won two An Post Irish Book Awards: Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year and RTÉ Radio 1's The Ryan Tubridy Show Listeners’ Choice Award. This novel also made the longlist for the Dublin International Literary Award in 2020 She also won the Cancel All Plans for the Book You Can't Put Down Award on Dead Good Books at the Harrogate Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in 2019. Her fourth novel Our Little Cruelties was published in March 2020. In 2016, she was awarded the Ireland Funds Monaco Bursary to be the Writer-in-Residence at The Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco and was also Writer-In-Residence in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in April 2019. She was awarded the Woman of the Year Award for Literature 2017. She lives in Dublin with her husband.
