Biography

Michael Foley was born in 1947 in Derry, Northern Ireland, and educated at St Columb’s College and Queens University, Belfast, where he took degrees in Chemistry and Computer Science and did research in Computer Science. In 1972 he moved to London, where he still lives, and a career in teaching, culminating in twenty three years at the University of Westminster lecturing in Information Technology. He retired in 2007 to devote himself to writing.

His first poems were published in 1969 in The Honest Ulsterman, a magazine he went on to edit with Frank Ormsby, and his first prose in a satirical column in the magazine Fortnight, which also serialised his first novel, The Passion of Jamesie Coyle. After retirement from teaching he wrote his first non-fiction book, The Age of Absurdity, and has since written three more non-fiction books.

He is married, with one daughter.