Garrison Keillor, who will read from his work at Dublin's Gate Theatre tomorrow night, is the best-selling author of Lake Wobegon Days and the writer-presenter of one of America's longest running radio shows.
Born in Minnesota in 1942, to a family of Plymouth Brethren, he began writing stories and essays for the New Yorker magazine in 1969. It was while writing a piece about the Grand Ole Opry that he got an idea for his own live radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Since 1974, he has written and starred in the weekly broadcast, which for the past decade has been heard coast-to-coast in the US, via satellite.
Lake Wobegon Days was in turn based on stories and monologues used in the show and topped the best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic in 1985 and 1986. Since then he has written several other books, including his first novel, Radio Romance, in 1992.
His latest novel, Wobegon Boy, has just been published by Faber & Faber. Like most of his work, it centres on life in and around a fictional Minnesota town populated mainly by Norwegian-Americans.
As well as writing and broadcasting, Garrison Keillor sings bass in the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. He lives in New York and Wisconsin with his wife Jenny and their baby, Maia.