Marian Keyes

Marian Keyes (born in Limerick in 1963) is an Irish novelist who writes in English and is often counted among the founders of chick lit, a light, contemporary fiction genre centred on young professional women. Her books have sold millions of copies and have been translated into more than thirty languages.

She studied law at University College Dublin and worked in office jobs, but from an early age she struggled with alcohol and depression. During a personal crisis that led her into a rehabilitation centre, she began writing short stories without any plan to write a novel. When she sent them to a publisher, the reply was a request for a full book, and that request led to Watermelon, published in Ireland in 1995 under the Irish title Claire se queda sola.

Her next novel, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married (1996), was a bestseller in Ireland, where it spent nine weeks at the top of the sales charts. That same year her name began to be linked with Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones's Diary, in a trend later named chick lit. Keyes has rejected the label, finding it belittling.

Her work falls into two broad strands. One is the Walsh Family series, in which each novel follows one of the sisters and mixes comedy with depression, addiction and family breakdown. The other is a set of standalone novels, such as Sushi for Beginners (2000), which marked a shift towards more complex female protagonists. She has also written non-fiction, including Under the Duvet (2001), drawn from her own experience. Her style pairs humour with dark subjects, and her stories usually end on a hopeful note.

Her legacy lies in giving a voice to contemporary women's fiction with a comic register that does not make light of suffering, and in opening the way for other Irish women writers whom the market was slow to take seriously.