Patricia Craig (born 1940s[1][a]) is a writer, anthologist and literary critic from Northern Ireland, living in Antrim, County Antrim.
Personal life
She was born in Belfast to Nora (née Brady) and Andy Craig[7] and attended St Dominic's Grammar School for Girls[8] before studying at the Belfast School of Art and then at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London (where she obtained a Diploma in Art & Design, Hons.). She returned to Northern Ireland in 1999.[7] She is married to the Welsh artist Jeffrey Morgan.[7]
Career
In the late 1960s, Craig was at Notre Dame Convent School in Battersea, working as an art mistress, but longed to have a literary career.[1] Since then, she has written memoirs, edited several anthologies and written articles for newspapers.[9] In London she began to collaborate with Mary Cadogan, editing several books on children's literature. Their first book, You’re a Brick Angela!, became a classic.[10]
On her return to Northern Ireland, she began to write books with an Irish theme. One of the first was a biography of Brian Moore which was described by the critic Seamus Deane as 'a crisp and intelligent account of a man and a writer for whom Craig's clean and incisive approach seems perfectly appropriate'.[11] Perhaps her most popular book was the memoir Asking for Trouble (1987) which details her schooldays, culminating in her expulsion from school.[8]
Awards
She was Honorary Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast where she was appointed to the Board of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.[12][9]
Publications
- You're a Brick Angela!: The Girls' Story 1839–1985 (1976)
- Women and Children First: The Fiction of Two World Wars (1978)
- The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction (1986)
- The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (1990)
- The Rattle of The North: An Anthology of Ulster Prose (1992)
- The Penguin Book of British Comic Stories (1992)
- The Oxford Book of Modern Women's Stories (1994)
- The Oxford Book of Schooldays (1995)
- The Oxford Book of Travel Stories (1996)
- The Oxford Book of Ireland (1998)
- Twelve Irish Ghost Stories (1998)
- The Belfast Anthology (1999)
- The Oxford Book of Detective Stories (2000)
- Brian Moore: A Biography (2002)[11]
- Asking for Trouble (2008)[8]
- A Twisted Root – Ancestral Entanglements in Ireland (2012)[13]
- Bookworm, A Memoir of Childhood Reading (2015)