The Cork Examiner said: "Like no other Irish writer just now, Hogan sets down what it's like to be a disturbed child of what seems a Godforsaken country in these troubled times."[1] The Irish Independent said he is "to be commended for the fidelity and affection he shows to the lonely and the downtrodden."[2]The Boston Globe said there "is something mannered in Hogan's prose, which is festooned with exotic imagery and scattered in sentence fragments."[3]
Hogan was born in Ballinasloe in east County Galway. His father was a draper.[1] Educated locally at St. Grellan's Boys' National School and St. Joseph's College, Garbally Park, some of his earliest work was published in The Fountain, the Garbally college annual.
In 1971 he won the Hennessy Award. The Irish Writers' Co-operative, formed by the writers Fred Johnston, Neil Jordan and playwright Peter Sheridan at a meeting in a Dublin restaurant, were to publish Hogan's The Ikon Maker, which was also the Co-op's first publication. While in Dublin, he worked as a street actor and had a number of plays – A Short Walk to the Sea, Sanctified Distances, and The Squat – produced in the Abbey Theatre and the Project Arts Centre. RTÉ and BBC Radio broadcast some of his plays, including Jimmy. He also published stories in small magazines such as Adam and the Transatlantic Review.
Later he moved to London, living in Tooting, Catford and Hounslow and then later as a lodger in the Hampstead home of Anthony Farrell, a young Irish publisher. Friends and acquaintances from this period included: writer Jaci Stephen, biographer Patrick Newley, Kazuo Ishiguro and his partner, Lorna.[1] Hogan also participated in poetry and literature readings held at Bernard Stone's Turrett Bookshop on Floral Street in Covent Garden.[citation needed]
His debut novel, The Ikon-Maker, was written in 1974 and published in 1976. It deals with a mother's unwilling recognition of her son's homosexuality.[1]
In 1989, Hogan left London and was a Hudson Strode Fellow at the University of Alabama. In 1991, Hogan was awarded a place on the DAAD (German Academic Exchange) Berlin Artists' Programme fellowship which enabled him to live in that city. It was in Berlin that he fell in love with a young man called Sammy (who died, apparently of AIDS-related illness, a few years later), with whom he travelled. These travels together yielded a collection of travel writing, The Edge of the City: A Scrapbook 1976-1991, in 1993. After this, Hogan moved on to Prague, grief-stricken, where he wrote Farewell to Prague (1995).[1]
Interested in history, painting, and traveller culture, he has used a typewriter since he was a child and finds the modern transition to computers difficult.[6] Suspicious of the telephone, he prefers to communicate using postcards.[1]
Sexual assault
Hogan was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. The assault happened on 11 November 2006 in a house Hogan was renting. He was given a two-year suspended jail sentence, placed on the sex offenders register, and ordered not to have unsupervised contact with children. The judge, Carroll Moran, made the judgement that there was a "moderate to low" likelihood of recidivism for Hogan. However, Hogan's parole officer, Nora Brassil, stated in an earlier hearing that Hogan saw the assault as "a mutual sexual incident/ relationship". She was concerned that if Hogan did not see what he had done as wrong, he might transgress again.[7]
Readings
1970s: Participated in readings in The Sarsfield Bar, Rutland Street. Limerick. Organised by John Liddy.
26 July 1989: Galway Arts Centre, Galway Arts Festival.
2002: Sean Dunne Literary Festival
21–22 September 2002: Annual International Frank O'Connor Festival of the Short Story
8 July 2004. Dublin. Launch of Munster Literature Centre journal Southword
Hogan features in a number of major anthologies of modern Irish literature.
William Trevor included him in The Oxford Book of Irish Stories and Colm Tóibín selected his story "Winter Swimmers" for The Penguin Book of Irish Writing.[1]
He appears in The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing.[8]
He appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press).[9]
Another Irish writer Colum McCann, claims that Hogan, along with Benedict Kiely, is one of two Irish writers who have influenced him greatly.
Joyce Carol Oates, an American writer, much admires his story "Winter Swimmers".[1]
According to Robert McCrum, former Literary Editor of The Observer, Hogan is "one of Ireland's finest writers".[1]
"The Tipperary Fanale", in: Judy Cooke & Elizabeth Bunster (eds.), The Best of Fiction Magazine, London: J.M. Dent, 1986, pp. 236–249, ISBN0-460-02464-7
"Guy "Micko" Delaney" (novelette), in: Robin Baird-Smith (ed.), Winter’s Tales, New Series: 4, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988, pp. 21–45, ISBN0-312-02480-0
"The cold wind and the warm", in: Alberto Manguel & Craig Stephenson (eds), In another part of the forest : an anthology of gay short fiction, New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1994, ISBN0-517-88156-X
David Marcus (ed.), Alternative Loves: Irish Gay and Lesbian Stories, Dublin: Martello Books, 1994, ISBN1-86023-001-6
"Jimmy", in: David Leavitt & Mark Mitchell (eds.), The Penguin Book Of Gay Short Stories, New York: Viking, 1994, ISBN0-670-85152-3 (republished in 2004, ISBN0-14-101005-3)
"A Curious Street", in: Dermot Bolger (ed.), The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction, New York: Vintage, 1995, ISBN0-679-76546-8
"Afternoon", in: Steve MacDonagh (ed.), Brandon Book of Irish Short Stories, Dingle: Brandon, 1998, ISBN0-86322-237-4
"A country dance", in: Colm Tóibín (ed.), The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction, London: Penguin, 1999, ISBN0-14-029849-5 and ISBN0-670-89108-8
"The bombs", in: John Somer and John J. Daly (eds.), Anchor Book of New Irish Writing: The New Gaelach Ficsean, Anchor, 2000, ISBN0-385-49889-6
"Eine seltsame Straße", in: Dirck Linck (ed.), Sodom ist kein Vaterland. Literarische Streifzüge durch das schwule Europa, Berlin: Querverlag, 2001, pp. 175–182, ISBN3-89656-066-2
"Airedale", in: William Trevor (ed.), The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002, ISBN0-19-280193-7
Andrew O'Hagan and Colm Tóibín, New Writing 11, Picador 2002, ISBN0-330-48597-0
"Barnacle Geese", in: Sebastian Barker (ed.), The London Magazine, June/July 2004, ISSN 0024-6085
"Iowa", in: Sebastian Barker (ed.), The London Magazine, February/March 2005, ISSN 0024-6085
"Rose of Lebanon", in: Rebecca Bengal (ed.), American Short Fiction, Issue 33, Winter 2006, ISSN 1051-4813
"Shelter", in: Sebastian Barker (ed.), The London Magazine, February/March 2005, ISSN 0024-6085
"The Hare's Purse", in: Stacey Swann, Rebecca Bengal, Jill Meyers (ed.), American Short Fiction, Issue 38, Summer 2007, ISSN 1051-4813
Further reading
Paul Deane, "The Great Chain of Irish Being Reconsidered: Desmond Hogan's A Curious Street", Notes on Modern Irish Literature, vol. 6, 1994, pp. 39–47.
Theo D’Haen, "Desmond Hogan and Ireland’s Postmodern Past", in Joris Duytschaever/Gert Lernout (eds.), History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, pp. 79–84.
Theo D’Haen, "Desmond Hogan and Ireland’s Postmodern Past", in Birgit Bramsback/Martin Croghan (eds.), Anglo-Irish and Irish Literature: Aspects of Language and Culture, Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1988, vol II, pp. 137–142.
Jerry Nolan, "Travelling With Desmond Hogan: Writing Beyond Ireland", ABEI Journal – The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies, Special Issue No. 5, June 2003.
^McDonough, Tim (2 January 1981). "Irish Tales Have Rooney Angle". Pittsburgh Press. E. W. Scripps Company. Daniel Rooney, whose correct middle initial, by the way, is M, confirmed that his family annually awards a prize of $2,000 to an Irish writer. The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, he explained, has been given for the last seven years to a native of Ireland who must be under 40 years old and writing in either English or Irish.
^Eastham, Benjamin; Testard, Jacques (6 April 2011). "Interview with Desmond Hogan". The White Review. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
^Roberts, Diane (12 March 2000). "The Irish tongue speaks with contemporary voices". St. Petersburg Times. St Petersburg, Russia. The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing is a great buffet of tasty fiction. It covers the past 30 years in short stories and includes work by John Banville, Aidan Mathews, Clare Boylan, Desmond Hogan and Neil Jordan, among others.[dead link]
^Mackin, Laurence (21 April 2012). "A restless shuffle of postcards from Europe". The Irish Times. Irish Times Trust. Retrieved 21 April 2012. The reader can play guessing games and try to name the country or language of origin based purely on the prose, although the cliches rarely click into place. That said, the two Irish stories in this book, by Gabriel Rosenstock and Desmond Hogan, share a clipped, brusque pace and a certain measured brutality.
