Patrick O'Keeffe

Patrick O’Keeffe is the author of “The Hill Road”, which won the 2005 Story Prize (which has the largest cash prize for any fiction award in the US - $20,000.00). The book is a collection of 4 novellas set in a fictional Irish dairy farming village. This setting would appear to be one that is especially close to Patrick O’Keeffe’s heart, as he himself was born on an Irish dairy farm in County Limerick in the 60s. He first started writing in his 20s. Patrick O’Keeffe initially went to the US as an illegal immigrant in 1986, where he did casual labour, such as bar work and building. In 1989, Patrick O’Keeffe was fortunate enough to win a Green Card in a lottery, and so he returned to the US, where he studied English at the University of Kentucky. In 1998, Patrick O’Keeffe was accepted onto the University of Michigan MFA writing program, where he studied with Nicholas DelBanco, Eileen Pollack, and Charles Baxter. In 2000, Patrick O’Keefe was one of the recipients of the Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship, and won the Chamberlain Award for Creative Writing. After his graduation in 2000, Patrick O’Keefe joined the University of Michigan as a popular lecturer in their creative writing department. Patrick O’Keeffe is currently working on his debut novel.