By Sean Moriarty

An award-winning Killarney writer’s seventh novel will be published in May.

Colin O’Sullivan is a teacher of English to Junior High and Senior High School students in Aomori, Honshu - the largest and most populous island in Japan.

A native of Ardshanavooly, Colin’s short fiction and poetry have been published in various print and online anthologies and magazines.

His first novel, ‘Killarney Blues’, won the prestigious 'Prix Mystère de la critique' in France.

Apple TV has adapted his sixth novel ‘The Dark Manual’ and the 10-episode series will stream worldwide in the autumn.

“I visited the set [Sunny TV] in November 2022 with my wife Yuki and we got the whole VIP experience from Apple and A24, the production company. We got to meet some of the stars, including Rashida Jones, and they all were utterly charming and down to earth. Also, we met with Irish director Dearbhla Walsh as she directed it. It's a mixture of English and Japanese and will stream worldwide.”

Colin’s parents are Betty and Pa O’Sullivan, both now retired in Woodlawn and well-known in Killarney where they ran the very successful Safe Hands Dry Cleaning service at Michael Collins’ Place, now the Shire bar and coffee shop.

While thousands of kilometres away from his native Killarney he published his first novel ‘Killarney Blues’ in 2013 about his boyhood memories of the Killarney Jarveys.

“Part of the joy of writing my debut novel was the process of imagining and recollecting Killarney. It's the only novel where I mention actual place names. So, for example, when I was writing Port Road I was naturally seeing it in the mind's eye and delighting in it. The Jarveys were of course an inspiration, I think primarily because of their uniqueness. You don't get them in any other town, hardly in any other country.”

A title name and publication date for his seventh book have yet to be announced ahead of this May publication.