Maureen Dowd, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Columnist to visit Ballinrobe

Pulitzer Prize winner Maureen Dowd will be laying a wreath at the John King memorial  in the Cornmarket, Ballinrobe and launching the Ballinrobe Town Heritage Walk during her visit to the town on June 26^th next.   Maureen has strong family roots in Ballinrobe.

Prior to this visit Ms Dowd will be conferred with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature (honoris causa) at National University of Ireland, Galway.

She is a 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner, in the commentary category, for her “unsparing columns on the hypocrisies involved in the Lewinsky affair and the effort to impeach President Clinton”; an incisive commentary about the dangerous liaisons of Bill, Monica, Hillary and Ken Starr and digs into the Y and X files, exploring the mysteries and muddles of sexual combat in America.

She was appointed a columnist of The New York Times’s Op-Ed page in January 1995 (which she joined in 1983).

Previously, she served as a correspondent in its Washington bureau from August 1986. There, she covered two Presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent, gaining a wide following of admirers and imitators for her witty, incisive and acerbic portraits of the powerful. She also wrote a column, “On Washington”, for The New York Times Magazine.

Ms. Dowd began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for the Washington Star where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter, and feature writer.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting in 1992, Ms Dowd received the Breakthrough Award from ‘Women, Men and Media’ at Columbia University in 1991 and a Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications in 1994. She was named one of Glamour’s Women of the Year for 1996 and won the Damon Runyon award in 2000 for outstanding contributions to journalism. Dowd is the author of two bestselling books Bushworld:  Enter at Your Own Risk (2004) and Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide (2005).

Born in Washington, D.C., on January 14, 1952, to an Irish Catholic family, Dowd is the youngest of five children of a Washington, D.C. police officer.

Ms. Dowd received a BA degree in English from Catholic University (Washington) in 1973.