Garbhan Downey is a novelist and editor from Derry, Northern Ireland.
Education
After graduating with an Master of Science in computing from the University of Ulster, he worked as an entertainments columnist with the Derry Journal and then as a staff reporter with the Londonderry Sentinel, before moving to the Irish News to become the paper’s Derry correspondent.
Career
He is the former Director of Communications and Marketing for Culture Company 2013, which is delivering Derry"s City of Culture year. Derry-born Downey cut his teeth in journalism editing University College Galway’s student magazine in the late 1980s. His offbeat reports of the 1994 World Cup for the Irish News were subsequently compiled for his first book, Just One Big Party.
Downey spent six years as a British Broadcasting Corporation news producer in Derry and Belfast, before joining the Derry News as editor in 2001.
Since 2004, he has published six comic novels set in the criminal underbelly of post-ceasefire Ireland. A former deputy-president of the Union of Students in Ireland, Downey was one of the organisers of a student occupation of government offices in Dublin on Budget Day 1988 in protest against education cutbacks.
Downey is a product of Street Columb’s College, the Catholic grammar school whose past pupils include John Hume, Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel. In June 2002, the Police Service of Northern Ireland got a court order to force Downey to hand over pictures the Derry News had captured of the Real Ireland Republican Army attacking a communications post.
A lifelong political anorak, in 2007, he worked as an election pundit for TV3 (Ireland), alongside the Irish comedian Brendan O’Carroll.
Downey donated his prize, a framed Ian Knox cartoon, to Ms Long by way of apology. His 2010 comedy-thriller The American Envoy was the first novel issued by an Irish publishing house as a Kindle e-book, simultaneously with its paperback release. In June 2011, he was appointed Director of Media for Culture Company 2013, the body tasked with delivering Derry"s United Kingdom City of Culture year.
Downey is married to Una McNally, and they have two children Fiachra (1998) and Bronagh (2003).
Politics
His books have been described as "a superb blend of comedy, political dirty tricks, grisly murder and bizarre twists". In 2006, he helped establish the new Northern Ireland literary review Verbal and edited the publication for its first six issues.