Since retiring from Publishers Weekly as co-editorial director in 2014, Michael Coffey has written extensively on Samuel Beckett. In addition to performance reviews in peer-reviewed Beckett journals, he has published Samuel Beckett Is Closed, an experimental work bringing Beckett into the 21st century, and Beckett’s Children, a hybrid work interweaving textual analysis and memoir. He has also published three books of poems, a collection of short stories; written a book on baseball’s perfect games and served as editor on The Irish in America, a companion volume to a PBS documentary marking the 150th anniversary of the worst year of the famine in Ireland. He has a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Studies from Leeds University (U.K.).
Michael Coffey
Writer & Editor
Participant In These Roundtable Discussions
Sat
Nov 8th
2025
Nov 8th
2025
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Fail Again, Fail Better
This roundtable explores the meaning and value of failure, examining whether persistence leads to growth, success, or its own kind of reward. It considers how cultural, psychological, and philosophical perspectives frame failure as an essential part of the human experience.