Author, broadcaster, filmmaker, art critic and part- time professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, Polly Devlin has had a remarkable career, taking her from her rural roots in County Tyrone in Ireland to the sophisticated world of arts and letters in London, New York and Paris. In her first job as Features Editor for Vogue she interviewed many major personalities of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Janis Joplin, and worked with photographers David Bailey, Richard Avedon, Norman Parkinson, Irving Penn and Lord Snowdon.
In 1994 she was awarded an OBE for services to Literature. In addition to her acclaimed books, All Of Us There, The Far Side of the Lough and Dora: or The Shifts of the Heart, she is also the author of the Vogue Book of Fashion Photography, a Guide Book to Dublin and a book of essays, Only Sometimes Looking Sideways and a publication for the National Gallery of Ireland on their ceramic collection. All of Us There and The Far Side of the Lough were published on the same day by different publishers, Weidenfeld & Nicholson and Victor Gollancz. They have gone into several editions and All of Us There is now a Virago Modern Classic. Stories from The Far Side of the Lough are frequently broadcast and dramatised. Her novel, Dora was read on Woman's Hour over a period of thirteen weeks.
She became a columnist for the New Statesman when she was twenty-two, and had her own page in the Evening Standard a year later. Soon after she went to Manhattan as a Features Editor and became a writer for Diana Vreeland on American Vogue where she interviewed Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman and Andy Warhol among many others. In 1990 she became a roving critic for The International Herald Tribune.
She has been a Booker Prize Judge and in Ireland a judge on the Irish Times Aer Lingus Literary award. She has broadcast many talks and has written a radio play for the BBC
In the 1980's she attended the National Film School in England. She wrote and directed a documentary called The Daisy Chain.
In the 1980's she hosted a series of talks and interviews on television for BBC Northern Ireland. She is on the Northern Ireland team in the Round Britain Quiz on Radio 4.
In 1996 she went back to University in London to study French literature. She now lives in London.
(Sourced from artist on August 1st 2016)
