Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIA was a Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Born near Castledawson, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the family moved to nearby Bellaghy when he was a boy. Heaney became a lecturer at St. Joseph's College in Belfast in the early 1960s, after attending Queen's University and began to publish poetry. He lived in Sandymount, Dublin, from 1976 until his death. He also lived part-time in the United States from 1981 to 2006. Heaney was recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry during his lifetime.
Heaney was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, and its Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994, he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1996, was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres. Other awards that he received include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Golden Wreath of Poetry, the T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread Prizes. In 2011, he was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2012, a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust.