A DAY after receiving an honorary doctorate from UCD, novelist Colm Tóibín returned to his native Co Wexford yesterday where he was honoured by a civic reception.
The event, part of celebrations to mark the 1,500th anniversary of Enniscorthy’s foundation, was hosted by the town council to honour the internationally acclaimed writer.
Following a lunch at the luxury Monart Spa Hotel, the chairman of Enniscorthy Town Council, Seán Doyle, told 70 guests that the prize-winning author was “one of our own, a proud Enniscorthy man”.
Tóibín later signed the town’s distinguished visitors book and was presented with a specially commissioned gold lapel pin, designed by local jeweller Walter Bourke Son, depicting the four symbols of the town: its founder, St Senan; Vinegar Hill; Enniscorthy Castle; and a pike, symbolising the town’s role in the 1798 Rising.
Speaking after the event, a clearly delighted Tóibín said: “It’s great to see everyone I know here. This is home. This is where I’m from and it’s just absolutely great.”
Many of Tóibín’s novels are set in Co Wexford including his most recent novel, Brooklyn, which describes the experience of an Enniscorthy emigrant in 1950s New York. Brooklyn won the Costa prize for fiction this year.
Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955, the second youngest of five children. He attended the local CBS, where his late father Micheál was a teacher, and later went to St Peter’s College in Wexford town.
Among the guests at yesterday’s ceremony were local councillors and the writer’s friends and relatives including his sister Bairbre Tóibín, who lives in Enniscorthy and who is also a published novelist.
Tóibín has written a play which will receive its premiere at the Dublin Theatre Festival later this year. He is also editing a new history of Enniscorthy to be published in November and he said yesterday he has written “three chapters” of a new novel which would be published in 2012.
He has sold the film rights for Brooklyn and it is hoped that it might be filmed on location in Enniscorthy.