Colm Tóibín FRSL is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet.
Tóibín is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in Manhattan and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2017.
Tóibín was called "a champion of minorities" by Arts Council director Mary Cloake as Tóibín collected the 2011 Irish PEN Award. That same year John Naughton, of The Observer, included Tóibín in his list of Britain's three hundred "public figures leading our cultural discourse" — despite Tóibín being Irish.