Jennifer Johnston, the Booker-shortlisted novelist and playwright "who explored family, loss and memory against the backdrop of a changing Ireland," died February 25, the Guardian reported. She was 95.
Praised as "the best writer in Ireland" by author Roddy Doyle, Johnston published regularly for four decades, beginning when she was in her 40s. Her honors included the Irish PEN Award and a lifetime achievement award at the Irish book awards in 2012, but "she was often considered an under-appreciated writer," the Guardian noted.
Johnston's father was the playwright and war correspondent Denis Johnston, who is regarded as the subject of her 2009 novel Truth or Fiction, about an aging playwright who feels forgotten.
She often watched her mother, actress Shelah Richard, "on stage from the wings and helped her practice her lines. It left her with a keen ear for the music and rhythm of spoken language," the Irish Times wrote.
"Words are our greatest joy," she said. "Whether you are speaking or writing, every single person in the world is a guardian of words."
Her urge to write came after having children. Her son Patrick Smyth told the Irish Times it was the only way "she could see of escaping the trap of domesticity and its isolation."
Johnston's first novel, The Captains and the Kings, was published in 1972 and won the Evening Standard Best First Novel Award. Her third, and perhaps best known book, was How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974).
In 1977, Johnston was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Shadows on Our Skin, and in 1979 she won the Whitbread Prize (now the Nero Award) for The Old Jest. Her first play, The Nightingale and Not the Lark, was performed in 1981. Later books include The Invisible Worm, The Gingerbread Woman, Grace and Truth, Foolish Mortals, and her final novel, Naming the Stars.