John McCourt was born in Dublin in 1965 and educated at Belvedere College and University College Dublin. Since 1991 he has lived in Trieste, where he teaches at the University of Trieste and where he founded and directs the annual Trieste Joyce School. He is the author of James Joyce: A Passionate Exile (an illustrated biography), Dubliners: A Guide to Text Analysis, and, with Renzo Crivelli, Joyce in Svevo’s Garden.