Brian Moore was born in Belfast in 1921 and educated there at St. Malachy's College. He immigrated to Canada in 1948, where he became a journalist and adopted Canadian citizenship. He spent some time in New York and then moved to California where he now lives.
His first book, "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" appeared in 1955 and won the Author's Club First Novel Award. Since then Moore has published 17 novels and gained numerous literary awards, among them the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award.
Most of Moore's books deal with contemporary life in Ireland, Canada and the USA, portraying ordinary lives of ordinary people. His own experience with Catholicism and a divided Ireland has issued in themes of guilt, isolation, ancestral memory and religious unease.
Four of his novels, "The Luck of Ginger Coffey", "Catholics", "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" and "Cold Heaven", have been made into films.