Michael Torney

Michael Torney was born in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, Ireland and early fell in love with stories and language, writing his first ballad at the age of nine. He studied English and French Literature at University College, Dublin and developed a love of drama. Growing up in a small-minded town where the playground was locked up for the Sabbath he was determined to live in other countries and worked in Western Europe, from a winter in the Norwegian Arctic Circle to a year teaching in Bologna, Italy as well as sojourns in Denmark, Netherlands, England, France and Germany. He returned to Dublin for two years moderating a poetry workshop for a year in Dublin’s oldest pub, the Brazen Head and published poems in Poetry Ireland, The Honest Ulsterman and The Irish Press among others. He went to the US in 1986 where he co-founded and performed with Laughing Gravy Theater in Boston and later moved to Las Vegas and worked in the convention industry as a Teamster. He is now retired in Cuenca for two years and looks forward to reading, writing, travel and good conversation, what used to be called ‘the good life’.