PETE HAMILL

Hamill’s best-selling books include A Drinking Life, Downtown, Forever, and North River. His essays and articles have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, Rolling Stone and many other publications.
Born into a working-class family whose immigrant parents hailed from Belfast, Hamill is widely viewed as a wise and humane man always willing to lay his reputation on the line for human rights. We have little doubt that this 2014 O’Neill award will prove to be one of the most popular in literary, journalistic, political, and neighborhood bar circles.
Upon receiving news of his forthcoming O’Neill Award, Hamill said, “It is a great honor. O’Neill was a giant, of course, an artist of power and beauty. His voice still reminds us that there are many ways to be Irish. And even more ways to be human. Before the iceman cometh, let’s have a great time saluting our deepest, bravest heritage.”