Seamus Deane: Derry-born author and poet dies
Published
The author and poet Seamus Deane has died aged 81.
Deane, an original member of the Field Day Theatre Company from Londonderry, died in hospital on 12 May.
President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins said his death would be an incalculable loss to Irish writing .
His debut novel Reading in the Dark was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won The Irish Times International Fiction Prize and The Irish Literature Prize in 1997.
In a statement, Mr Higgins said Deane was a distinguished poet, novelist and internationally acclaimed university teacher . To Derry he leaves the incomparable legacy of the life, the writing, the concerns, the despair and the hope, that he shared with its people and to which so much of the work would respond, said Mr Higgins.