Mary Morrissy is the author of three novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey, and a collection of stories, A Lazy Eye. Her second collection of stories, Prosperity Drive, is forthcoming in 2016. Mother of Pearl, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award (now Costa) and The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey were both nominated for the Dublin Impac International Literary Award. Her short fiction has been anthologised widely, most recently in Dubliners 100 and All Over Ireland: New Irish Short Stories.  She has won a Hennessy Award and been awarded the prestigious US Lannan Award which honours writers whose work “is of exceptional quality”. She has taught creative writing in the US and Ireland since 2000 and currently leads the fiction component on the MA in Creative Writing at UCC. She was appointed a member of Aosdana in 2015.