John Waters

Biography

John Waters was born in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, in 1955. Despite the best efforts of a number of local schools, he remained uneducated in any acceptable sense. He was employed in a range of jobs after leaving school, including railway clerk, showband roadie, petrol pump attendant and mailcar driver. He began part-time work as a a journalist in 1981, with Hot Press, Ireland’s leading rock ‘n’ roll magazine. He became a full-time writer for Hot Press in 1984, when he moved to Dublin. As a journalist, magazine editor and columnist, he has specialised in raising unpopular issues of public importance, most recently the issue of the hidden mistreatment of men in Irish society, particularly in relation to their right to legally protected relationships with their children. He has published a number of books and written several plays for stage and radio.

John Waters Full-Time Journalistic Work History

1984/’85: Wrote about music, politics and social affairs for Hot Press. Also wrote radio column and features for The Sunday Tribune.

1985-’87:  Editor of In Dublin, the capital’s entertainment, arts, political and listings magazine.

1988: Editor of Magill, Ireland’s leading current affairs magazine.

1989/’90: Television reporter with RTE arts show, Arts Express.

1990 -the Present: Columnist and feature writer with The Irish Times. Weekly column dealing with politics, culture and current affairs.

John Waters - Books Published

		Jiving at the Crossroads: Shock of the New in Haughey's Ireland (Blackstaff,1991) Highly personal look at Irish politics which became a major Irish bestseller.
		Race of Angels (4th Estate/Blackstaff,1994) An exploration of Irish popular culture with particular reference to U2 and their Irish sensibility, published in both Ireland and Britain.
		Every Day Like Sunday? (Poolbeg, 1995) A collection from the Irish Times  columns of the first five years of the 1990s, drawing together some of the hidden themes concerning the economic and social reality of modern Ireland.
		An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth 1997) Many of these themes are developed and expanded in the extended essay An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland.
		The Whoseday Book In 1998 he devised the concept of the Irish Hospice Foundation’s massive fundraising millennium diary and anthology, The Whoseday Book, one of the biggest ever fundraising projects organised by an Irish charity. In Autumn 2007, a follow up project, LifeStory, editred by John Waters will be launched in aid of the IHF. The Whoseday Book raised some €3m for the Irish Hospice Foundation. LifeStory In 2007 he edited a follow-up to The Whoseday Book, also in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation. LifeStory is a variation on the concept of a Memory Book, which facilitates the user in writing their own or their family's history.
		The Politburo Has Decided You Are Unwell His most recent book, a collection of his more recent work from The Irish Times and elsewhere, was published 2004, entitled The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell.
		Lapsed Agnostic The story of his journey through faith, agnosticism and back, will be published by Continuum in the autumn of 2007.

Radio

Presented a three-part 1992 series, Wide Awake in Ireland, for BBC Radio 4, (Special Current Affairs department) on the changing face of Irish culture and politics. The producer was Gwyneth Williams.

Plays

Long Black Coat

Long Black Coat,  staged by Bickerstaffe of Kilkenny in Summer 1994, won the BBC/Stewart Parker Award for 1994. Text published in 1995 by New Island Books.

Easter Dues

A second play, Easter Dues, was staged by Bickerstaffe in 1997.

Holy Secrets

A radio play commissioned by the BBC, and broadcast on Radio 4 in December 1996, won the 1997 Richard Imison Memorial Award for a first radio play.

Adverse Possession

Another radio play, Adverse Possession, was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in December 1998.

In 2000, he was commissioned by Metropolitan Films to write a screenplay for a feature film based on the story of Harry Gleeson, a farm labourer and fiddle player who was hanged in the Ireland of the 1940s for a murder he did not commit.

John Waters has also written and as yet undeveloped feature film script, entitled Dead Men’s Clothes.

John Waters, though as yet unmarried, has a daughter, Roisin, born March 10th 1996, who lives with him in Dalkey, Co Dublin.