Robert McLiam Wilson was born in Belfast on 24 February 1966 and studied English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He is the author of the novels Ripley Bogle (1989), winner of the Hughes Prize, a Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Irish Book Award and the Betty Trask Prize; Manfred's Pain (1992); and Eureka Street (1996), winner of the Belfast Arts Award for Literature. He is also the author, with Donovan Wylie, of The Dispossessed (1992), a non-fiction book about poverty.
In 2003, Robert McLiam Wilson was named by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists', despite the fact that he has not published new work in English since 1996.
----from British Council site