Josephine Edna O'Brien (1930 – 2024). Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet, and short-story writer.
Her works often revolve around the inner feelings of women and their problems relating to men and society as a whole.
In 2015 she was elected to Aosdána by her fellow artists and honoured with the title Saoi. She was the recipient of many other awards and honours, winning the Irish PEN Award in 2001 and the biennial David Cohen Prize in 2019. France made her a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2021. Her short story collection Saints and Sinners won the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the world's richest prize for a short story collection.
- "... beautifully dressed in black jacket and skirt with an intricate silver necklace, her red hair perfectly styled." https://www.theguardian.com/.../edna-obrien-90-ireland...
- "With her auburn hair, green eyes and Irish country lilt..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../obitua.../edna-o-brien-dead.html
-"... the memory of a previous face-to-face conversation allows me easily to summon up images of her auburn hair, flashing green eyes..." https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/201/edited_volume/chapter/1045005
- "O’Brien is known for reddish-brown hair that is abundant but not curly." https://www.newyorker.com/.../edna-obrien-is-still...
- "Ms. O’Brien was an ageless Celtic beauty, a point not lost on a procession of feature writers who described her as auburn-haired and milky-skinned, with soulful gray-blue eyes.
Robert Gottlieb, Ms. O’Brien’s longtime editor at Alfred A. Knopf in New York, wrote that she “was a glory … with her pale white skin, spectacular red hair, and exotic outfits..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/07/28/edna-obrien-irish-novelist-country-girls-dead/
